Wasteland Gate
by KyliaQuilor
Summary: Following the NCR Victory at Second Hoover Dam, Victoria Fernandez, the Courier who made it happen, learns from Mr. House's files of a top-secret pre-War Military project called "Project Blue Book" under Cheyenne Mountain. Curiosity and concern at what House was planning sends Victoria on a trip across the West - and then into the stars as the Wasteland rediscovers the Stargate.
1. The End of A Long Journey

**Disclaimer: **I don't own the Stargate-verse, or the Fallout-verse.

This fic was inspired after reading Fallout: SG-1, by RossCostello. I thought the story had a really fun premise and it is very well written and enjoyable but A - it hasn't been updated since 2016, and B - I didn't agree with every plotting choice the author made (choices they are allowed to make, of course, and not agreeing doesn't mean they were bad choices)

So I got inspired to write my own fic instead. While it is inspired by Fallout: SG-1, and some things will logically be similar, this is my own story taking things my own way, and not a knock on RossCostello or their story. In fact, I invite everyone else to read Fallout: SG-1, because, despite its unfinished status, it remains a good fic and is well worth a look.

I always try to capture the voice of the characters properly - if you think I have any issues with characterization, please, feel free to let me know. Same with lore/worldbuilding issues, though, bear in mind, I don't consider Fallout Tactics to be Canon, and canon and pseudo canon stuff outside of Fallout 3/New Vegas/4 (the games I know best) is fair game for minor changes, to varying degrees. Still, just let me know if you find an issue, and I'll take it under advisement as long as it's done with at least a modicum of politeness.

As a minor note, due to my terrible fluency (or rather, general lack thereof) with Spanish, I'm not actually going to include many actual spanish words in Raul's dialogue, even though that would make sense from how he speaks in-game, from time to time. Some words will show up, but not many. And if they do show up, I may get them wrong. A lot.

In this universe, the events of the Stargate Movie (minus Jack O'Neill, but including Daniel Jackson) happened in January 2077, just nine months or so before the bombs dropped. Exactly what has happened in the galaxy over the last 200 years will be revealed over the course of the fic. Many characters of Stargate SG-1 and even a handful from Atlantis will show up, almost always as Fallout versions of themselves (Carter is a scientist with OSI, O'Neill is an NCR Ranger, for example) though some will take several chapters to show up. Teal'c is Apophis's First Prime, his birth suitably delayed by handwavium so he can be the same age at the start of this fic as he was in Season 1.

Wasteland Gate

By Kylia

Chapter 1: End of a Long Journey

**Outskirts of Denver, Colorado**

**6 Months after the NCR Victory at Second Hoover Dam**

"Surrender your weapons, your goods and yourselves, profligates," the Decanus said, keeping his shotgun leveled at what appeared to be the leader of the four travelers from the west. Legate Marcus Agrippa, true heir to Caesar, had ordered all outsiders detained and brought to him for questioning and enslavement.

"So who's the officer who has gone and declared himself ruler of Denver here then?" The leader cocked an eyebrow, not lowering her pistol.

"I serve Legate Marcus Agrippa, true heir to Caesar and Master of Denver," The Decanus replied. "Surrender or die! We have you outnumbered, Profligate!"

The leader laughed, _laughed_ at his order, and it was the Decanus could do to not shoot her now for her insult.

"Being outnumbered is something I'm used to, Decanus," the leader replied, shrugging blandly. The Decanus bit his lip for a moment, and he could tell from the stances of the rest of his men that they too were on the verge of charging or shooting, depending on their weaponry.

"Veronica," the leader looked over to one of her companions, a pale, dark-haired woman wearing nondescript wanderer's garb - very different from the black, obviously old-world armor the leader wore. On her right hand, the pale woman had a power fist, like the ones Caesar's Praetorian Guard had used, that Legate Agrippa had given to his own Praetorians.

"Do you think we should surrender?"

"Seems like a bad idea," The woman - Veronica - said, shrugging. "Can I take the one to the left the idiot with the shotgun? He's leering at me." The Decanus looked at the legionary on his left and tightened his grip on his own shotgun. They showed no concern for the situation they were in!

"SURRENDER OR DIE!" The Decanus barked, "All of you!"

"Here's the thing, Decanus. I don't surrender. Not a fan. And if you're smart, you'll turn tail and run." With her free hand, she tugged down slightly on her black, broad-brimmed hat.

"The Legion does not run."

"They sure did from me at Second Hoover Dam," her lips turned up in a wicked, cruel smirk he'd have expected on a Frumentarii. It sent the first chill of fear down his spine that he'd felt in years. _You are a legionary! A Decanus! Control yourself! This profligate woman poses no_-

"The ones that were left after I finished emptying my .44 into Lanius's skull, anyway," the woman continued.

Now that chill of fear became an icy grip deep in his gut. "No..."

"Yep," The woman gave an elaborate bow while still pointing her gun at him. "Victoria Fernandez, courier, contractor-at-large for the NCR and general pain in the ass, at your service."

The Decanus physically swallowed as he looked at the olive-skinned woman before him. _She's just a woman, just a weak profligate-_

But he couldn't think it. Victoria Fernandez was no _woman. _She was a demon - a monster, a scourge upon the Legion in human flesh. Slayer of Caesar, of Lucius, of Lanius, of Vulpes Inculta. A one-woman army, who it was said had single-handedly won Second Hoover Dam and broken the Legion...

_It can't be true! It's all lies! No one person could do that!_

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw his own men wavering, though none were running. Not yet.

And yet -

The Decanus _wanted_ to run. He wanted to flee - and keep fleeing until this terror before him was miles away.

"You! You are a Profligate myth! You are not-!" The Decanus tried to say, about to fire his shotgun at her, to kill her now -

He didn't even get to shoot a single shell before the .44 bullet went through his right eye and into his brain.

**Outskirts of Denver, Colorado**

**6 Months after the NCR Victory at Second Hoover Dam**

"Huh," Victoria holstered her pistol less than five minutes after firing off her first shot. "So I guess the Legionaries around Denver really do still have discipline. They all fought to the death even after I told them who I was." She crouched by the body of the Decanus she'd shot first, grabbing his belt pouch and searching for anything else useful on his body. Just some shotgun shells and pinyon nuts.

"Really, Boss, you're the one of the richest women in the Mojave and you're still stopping to loot dead bodies?" The raspy voice of Raul said from behind her.

"We're a long way from friendly territory," she pointed out, checking the pouch. A couple dozen Denarii, and a few Aure. A well paid idiot she'd gone and run into, apparently. "Plus, how do you think I got so rich?"

"I'm still a little surprised most of the patrols we ran into just ran off rather than fight," Victoria turned to look at Arcade, the blonde man pulling a stimpack out of his pack and sticking it into his arm, near where he'd gotten a grazing injury from one of a bullet. "Given how brainwashed your typical Legionary is."

"Or was," Victoria mused. "I mean, they were also taught to believe that Caesar was God, and now God is dead."

"I don't think Nietzsche applies here," Arcade countered.

"No, but I am the one who killed their 'God', and his entire inner circle. If the Son of Mars can't stop me, if the Monster of the East couldn't stop me... well, what are mere mortals like your average legionary supposed to do." She shrugged and stood up. "Veronica, you alright?"

"A few scratches, but nothing serious," the former Scribe said, cleaning bits of blood and bone off her power fist.

"Raul?"

"I'm good, Boss," Raul shook his head. "Remind me why I agreed to go on this trip with you?"

"Because you were getting bored on the Mojave?" Victoria shrugged.

"No Boss, that was you," Raul shook his head. "This trip may be hell on my knees, but someone's got to keep an eye on you on this crazy plan of yours." Victoria smiled a little at his words. "So how much longer till we reach Colorado Springs and..."

"The Cheyenne Mountain Complex," Victoria supplied. "Home to Project Blue Book, and something House was apparently prepared to send half his Securitron Amy to secure, this far away from Vegas, if need be." Victoria moved onto another body, grabbing his ammo and coin pouch as well as anything else of value that wasn't that heavy - she didn't carry a shotgun, nor did anyone else in her little party, but ammo made for a good thing to sell.

Though, House's notes had said he'd have prefered to find 'reasonably trustworthy human employees', when the time came, just monitored by a few of his Securitrons to keep them honest.

Convincing Veronica to come with her when she'd found House's plans buried in his computer systems at the Lucky 38 had been easy. The Mojave chapter of the Brotherhood had been willing to help the NCR at Second Hoover Dam, but refused to move any further forward than that. Arcade was coming because he'd never trusted House and didn't trust that it wasn't some pre-war superweapon House had wanted.

Victoria had her doubts about that, but she'd agreed to help Arcade destroy or secure it if it was, so it could never be used.

Raul had mostly just shrugged and said 'let me get my tools' when she asked him to come along. She envied the ghoul's ability to just... go with the flow of life so easily. _Then again, a hell of a lot happened to him to make him like that_.

Victoria had mostly just wanted the excuse to leave the Mojave. The NCR was good for the region, for the people living there, and they were on their way to being incorporated as a full state. But it was getting too civilized for her taste.

_But I can't say I'm not curious about what that pre-war pendejo was up to._ House had vision, she'd give him that, but his plan had been... well, fucking stupid. Not to mention his idiotic management of the Three Families and his notion that he could just milk all the money out of the NCR forever and all time.

_Maybe he could have done it, maybe, but I'd rather not support the cost._

So anything he'd marked as 'urgent priority' once New Vegas and the Mojave Wasteland were secured was of interest to her.

"Anyway, it's about... four, maybe five more days." Victoria said after consulting her Pip Boy and its map. "Could be three if we can make a straight shot down the Interstate, but that's unlikely." Something would probably get in the way of that.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Arcade asked, holstering his energy pistol. "We should get moving. Before another patrol comes by."

**Ruins of Colorado Springs**

**6 Months after the NCR Victory at Second Hoover Dam**

"People have passed through here, recently," Victoria said, crouching down to examine the cigarette butts and footprints. "Hopefully locals from Cheyenne." Colorado Springs had all the hallmarks of being near a nuclear detonation - Cheyenne Mountain Complex being the target, presumably, as well as some of the other nearby military facilities.

"I'm still amazed that town exists at all," Arcade mused. "This place had to have been covered in missiles, and yet people hiding out in the underlevels of Cheyenne Mountain managed to survive and come back up into the wasteland and make a town in the place." Arcade frowned, "I'm sure you've thought of this, Victoria, but what if they already have whatever Project Blue Book is?"

"House's records seemed to imply it was under the underlevels, really deep underground, and that those lowest levels were sealed with some sort of advanced locking you needed a proper code for," she tapped her Pip Boy. "Which I have here. In theory, not even the best hackers would be able to get through it."

"I hope your right, or this has been a waste of time."

"Oh come on Arcade, it's not like you wanted to stick around New Vegas while the NCR consolidated even more," Victoria laughed.

"Maybe not, but I could have gone with other Followers up to Wyoming," Arcade pointed out.

"If it turns out this was a wild goose chase, I might go there myself. Papa Khan left a message for me inviting me to come visit when the Khans left Red Rock Canyon," Victoria mused. She'd impressed the Khan leader, at least to an extent, when she'd been able to convince him to reclaim the legendary Mongol legacy and to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of the NCR and the Legion.

She shook her head, "Anyway, with any luck the people of Cheyenne will realize that we're not a threat and be interested in trading. They still trade with some of the communities that the Legion used to control... and parts of it still do." She was a bit surprised that they did that, but after taking Denver, Caesar's Legion had pulled up short and turned entirely back West, and though the people of Cheyenne apparently didn't have any real love for the Legion, they weren't under immediate threat.

Plus, supposedly, they had access to some good pre-war hardware that they used to defend themselves. _But nothing like a superweapon or some... cache of power armor whatever._ Nothing that would be worth Mr. House making it a priority.

Victoria stood back up. "The people of Cheyenne have picked this place clean though. No scrap, no salvage... hell..." She walked over towards the ruined skeleton of what might have been a house with aluminum siding. Parts of the outside, what was left of it, might even have been...

"Someone's been harvesting a way at these buildings, taking off chunks of the wall, probably to drag building material to Cheyenne. Or somewhere else nearby, I suppose." She shook her head. "Sorry. We should keep going."

Victoria checked her pipboy, but it was a bit hard to get a clear fix on how best to navigate these ruins... she fiddled with the dials on the device, then finally got it zoomed properly... maybe. _I've let myself get reliant on this thing since Doc Mitchell gave it to me._

"That way," She pointed to the southwest. They picked their way through the ruins, and though Victoria - and Veronica - kept their eyes open for any sort of salvage, or something worth taking, but the whole place really had been picked clean, and they saw more signs of people having just... ripped parts off the ruins and moved them away. Usually when people used the ruins to build like that, they rebuilt right there where they were salvaging. _Then again, Cheyenne does have a place they call home..._

"I think we're almost to Fort Carson, and then from there it's not much further to the Mountain..." she looked up at the sky. "But we may want to rest there, if we can. Not surprise them when it gets dark and all."

"Not a bad plan Boss," Raul agreed. "Small towns like this Cheyenne... no big friends or warlords nearby to protect them - they don't like to let people in or even come close when it's getting dark." He shrugged and Victoria nodded.

Victoria tried in vain, as they walked, to find a radio frequency to tune into, something anything, even some pre-war channel, but despite her efforts, she didn't find anything, unsurprisingly. The Legion apparently tracked down the source of any old world radio signals and destroyed any transmitters they could...

Raul was quiet, and Arcade and Veronica talked about the Mojave and exchanged theories about what Project Blue Book might have been about. Veronica's ideas got crazier and crazier, from time machines to cyborg armies to space ships with Faster than light capacity. Victoria had had to stop and ask what the hell that actually meant -

And been subjected to a physics lecture from Arcade and Veronica that she could have done without.

As they drew close to Fort, Victoria took off her sunglasses with the setting sun, slipping them inside a belt pouch. Then she briefly removed her hat and wiped her brow, pushing aside a few strands of hair that had stuck to her damp forehead. _This riot armor from the divide is good, but did it have to be black?_ That was not the first time the thought had crossed her mind, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

She paused, dropping her back to the ground and fishing out a fresh canteen of water. Fortunately, most of the rivers, ponds, and streams they'd passed had been free of any leftover radiation, along with other water sources. They'd boiled the water, of course.

She unscrewed the cap and sipped, slinging her back back on.

Finally, they were able to get past the ruins, and she had an unobstructed view of Fort Carson up ahead -

The bombs had wrecked the walls of the place, but they'd been patched more recently, and at several spots she saw some sort of... automated turrets? Hooked up to some computers, probably, ready to fire at someone's order.

"HALT" Someone shouted down from the walls, across the distance, aided by some sort of pre-war device they were holding up to their mouths. "Wait there while we send someone out!"

"Okay..." Victoria pulled up short, bemused. Cheyenne was supposed to be situated at the mountain, not here in the old fort, right? She kept her hands on the handles of two of her guns - one on her modified .44, and the other on the .357 police pistol she'd salvaged from the Sierra Madre.

She saw the gates to the fort open and three people walk out - one was in power armor, and unlike the NCR's heavies, the servos seemed to be still in place, because the person inside it was moving at a reasonable pace. The other two, as they drew closer, she saw were wearing U.S. Army combat armor, the faded green and the star on the chest a clear giveaway.

"Power armor?" Veronica shook her head, "Where the - how?! God..." She shook her head. "If the Brotherhood hears about this... thought I suppose it makes sense that NORAD might have had at least a few suits, if they're from Cheyenne..."

"I was more noticing the Gatling Gun the one in the metal armor is carrying," Raul pointed out. "Maybe try to be more diplomatic than you were with those Legionaries by Denver, Boss?"

"I'll do my best Raul," Victoria chuckled. She let out a sigh and pulled her hands away from her guns, holding them up just a little - not in a gesture of surrender, just to make clear she wasn't making aggressive moves.

"Who are you?! What's your business here?" The one in the power armor asked as they got within thirty or so feet. He leveled the gun, aiming it at the ground in front of him, but clearly ready to redirect it if need be. _And there's no cover here unless we go backwards..._

"Victoria Fernandez. These are my friends, Raul Tejadas, Veronica Santangelo and Arcade Gannon," she pointed to each in turn. She lowered her hands to her sides. "I'm on my way to Cheyenne."

"Victoria Fernandez?" One of the two in combat armor - a woman, young, maybe 18 - blurted out. "But -" she turned to the one in power armor. "This is that woman those traders were talking about last month! The one who beat the Legion way out West, killed Caesar and-"

"Created the entire mess we're in," the one in the power armor cut the woman off.

"Excuse me?" Victoria raised an eyebrow. "What did I do to you?"

"Created a massive Refugee problem," the power armored man replied. "When the Legion collapsed started fighting itself, civilians and escaping slaves fled, and a lot fled here, since we're outside of what was Legion territory." He gestured to the fort. "The Cheyenne Council has been helping them turn this old Fort into a new town for them to live in, but in the meantime, it's a lot of work, and we have to help keep the peace and defend it."

"So you are from Cheyenne," she didn't make it a question.

"Lieutenant Richard Davis, Cheyenne Defense Volunteers," the man replied. "Are you actually Victoria Fernandez?"

"That's what my parents named me," Victoria replied. "And yeah, though I suppose you don't have to believe me, I am the woman who killed Caesar... but I didn't win Second Hoover Dam single-handedly or any of the other stuff these traders your friend was talking about probably are saying about me."

"You are supposed to be ten feet tall and have orange hair," Lt. Davis replied after a moment. "But if you're the woman who did all that - all the way over in... Nevada, why are you here?"

"Project Blue Book," Veronica answered first. Victoria frowned. _Veronica, girl, I love you, but maybe don't spill the beans yet?_

"What?" Davis's confusion sounded genuine.

"It's a bit of a long story. I'd like to talk it over with your leaders - the Cheyenne Council you called them? I'm happy to pay for the privilege, and for a place to sleep tonight or for a few days."

"You're welcome in Fort Carson, but since you're not a trader or a refugee, you will need to pay a small entry fee to help support the refugees," Davis said. "As for coming to Cheyenne to meet with the Council..." Davis paused for a moment. "I'll send a message, but no promises. We don't hate outsiders, but trust can be expensive."

"Very true," Victoria agreed. "Do you guys take Caps? I've also got some Legion currency, if that's still worth anything to you."

"Not worth what it used to be, but gold and silver are gold and silver. A Denurias... Denaris," Davis gave up: "The silver ones - one for each of you will be fine. You can pay at the gate."

"Alright then. Lead on." Hopefully she could talk her way into a meeting with this Council and convince them to let her down into the lowest levels. _If nothing else, I'm sure there's something they need I can go and get for them._

She was a courier, after all.


	2. The Cheyenne Council

**Disclaimer:** Still not mine.

The blue outfit Jenny is wearing below is meant to be based on Air Force Dress Blues, which is the official outfit for people who work for Cheyenne's government that aren't part of the Cheyenne Defense Volunteers (that is, for all the civilians).

As always, if you think my characterization is off anywhere, let me know.

Wasteland Gate

By Kylia

Chapter 2: The Cheyenne Council

**Fort Carson Refugee Camp**

**Six Months After the NCR Victory at Second Hoover Dam**

When she'd heard 'refugee camp', Victoria expected something closer to Bitter Springs and the camp there, but as it turned out...

Not so much.

_Funny what you can do when you actually have resources to spare because House isn't tying your hands_. General Oliver's failures as a leader hadn't helped, but if House hadn't kept getting in the way, the NCR could have solved a lot of problems in the Mojave a lot sooner.

Then again, if they had, she wouldn't have had a chance to fix them herself, and wouldn't have gotten rich, so... it all balanced out, she supposed.

The inside of Fort Carson was large and expansive, and the structures inside were largely intact - repairs made here and there, some of them slapdash and short term, but it was more than just a tent shantytown. Off in the distance, she even saw what looked like some cropland inside the walls of the fort. _Well that makes it easier to resist siege_. Not that she thought there were enough soldiers here to man all the walls she was seeing and how they went off into the distance. It would take a several companies of NCR troopers to do that, probably.

Still, as refugee camps went, the place seemed pretty peaceable. Kids were running around, playing, people were going about their business, she saw a few market stalls, people arguing over prices. As they got further from the gate, they were stopped by a short-haired dark-skinned woman in a blue formal-looking uniform.

"Lt. Davis, who are our visitors?"

"Travellers from our west. All the way from New Vegas, apparently. Not merchants or refugees."

"Visitors' fee it is." the woman looked over to them. "Are any of you carrying psycho, jet or Med-X?"

Victoria frowned, "No to the first two, I know that. We had some Med-X before we left New Vegas, but I think we used it all up after that fight near Rand Junction?" She looked back to the others.

"No... I think..." Arcade dropped his bag and searched through it quickly. "No, we still have two doses." Victoria turned back to the woman.

"Is that going to be a problem?"

"Psycho and Jet are illegal here and in Cheyenne, but Med-X is legal, but restricted. If you decide you want to sell it, it'll have to be Doctor Lam or one of her assistants, over that way. We catch you selling it to anyone else, and you'll have a pay a fine... and leave."

"Wasn't planning on selling it, so that all works. Though I do have some excess ammo to sell. Where would I do that?"

"There's some guns and ammo shops over on the far end of the cropland," the woman said. "Anyway, for the four of you, that'll be four Denarii, ten caps or the equivalent."

Victoria pulled out some of the silver coins she'd taken from the Decanus and handed them over. "Here, take a few extra. God knows I hate these stupid things."

The woman didn't refuse the extra money, dropping them through a small hole in the top of a locked metal box after taking a quick look to make sure they appeared genuine.

"Not a fan either, but traders and communities over west still take them over bottle caps, and if nothing else they can be melted down into bars and sold off to the east." She turned to Davis. "Go on back to the walls."

"I need to use the radio first," Davis disagreed. "This woman wants to speak to the Council, and I think they might want to." He gestured to Victoria.

"Alright, go ahead." Davis headed off towards a building that had a series of antennae sticking out of the roof and every window. The woman turned back to Victoria. "If you're looking for a place to stay, there's an inn on the east side, past the houses over there. Rooms are pricey, mostly for visiting traders, but it'll work - it's called the Black Bottle."

The other two that had been with Lt. Davis headed back to the gate after a nod from the woman.

She looked over at them, raising an eyebrow when she look a second look at Raul, but saying nothing.

"Any more questions?"

"Tons, I'm sure, but I'm guessing you'd rather not indulge my curiosity for the next three hours," Victoria said, looking around. She could see here and there, the signs that this really was a refugee camp - the people, most of them, had a slightly hollow, hungry look to them, a lot skinnier than their seemingly prosperous surroundings would suggest. They were also a lot more armed than a place like this, well defended and seemingly safe, would be on the West Coast.

They were more wary too, and she noticed she was getting suspicious, albeit not hostile, looks from some of the 'civilians'. They didn't know her, she wasn't carrying goods, but looked too well off and well fed to be one them...

"Not right now, but if you catch me off duty and buy the beer, sure," the woman said with a smile that... held a little promise. It wasn't hard to catch the intent, though it did throw Victoria for a loop for just a moment.

_Huh. Right._ They weren't in the NCR anymore, or in Legion territory. She didn't have to be quite so cautious about her preferences for woman anymore. And since she'd long since given up on Veronica picking up on her hints...

"That sounds like fun," Victoria agreed. "I'll probably be over at this Black Bottle by the time you're off duty. Meet me there?"

"Sure." The woman smiled. "I'm Jenny. Jenny Thurmond, by the way," she added.

"Victoria Fernandez," she took off her hat and did an elaborate bow, "a pleasure, _bonita_." And the woman was actually quite pretty, when Victoria looked her over. That formal outfit wore well on her too. _Looks kind of like a uniform - probably is, for that matter._

Jenny smiled prettily, a little bit of light dancing in her eyes, but before she could say anything, Veronica cut in.

"You - you guys couldn't have repaired and rebuilt this place like this just in the last six months? What did you use it for before?"

"Good eye," Jenny nodded. "We used to just use it as extra farmland - kept some people here to guard and work, repaired the other structures on and off as needed. There'd been plans on the drawing board to totally repair and resettle the place for a few decades, I think, but until we starting getting all those refugees, it just wasn't worth the time."

"Okay," Veronica nodded, then turned to Victoria. "I'm going to check out the market, see if there's any interesting little bits of salvage or tech to buy." She looked over at Arcade, "they might have some parts to do that upgrade to your energy pistol I was talking about the other day. I just need a few things and I can probably jerry-rig it."

"Sounds like a plan, I suppose," Arcade nodded.

"Go on," Victoria nodded. "Raul, let's see what price we can get for that ammo and anything else we don't need."

"Sure, sure, Boss," Raul nodded.

**Colonel's Office, Cheyenne Mountain Underlevel 4**

**Six Months After the NCR Victory at Second Hoover Dam**

"Colonel Mitchell, Sir?" At the sound of the radio in his office coming to life, Colonel Cameron Mitchell, commander of the Cheyenne Defense Volunteers looked up from his computer where he'd been typing a report. "It's Lt. Davis from Fort Carson."

Mitchell pushed his chair over to the radio and tuned the dial a moment, then replied. "Davis, this is Maj- Colonel Mitchell. No one's supposed to be reporting until tonight. What's the situation?" He'd only just gotten this job three weeks ago and he was still getting used to his new rank.

It wasn't a rank he'd particularly wanted, but he wasn't going to say no to the promotion when the Council offered it.

_Better me than that asshole Maybourne or his buddy Simmons._ Colonel Hammond's retirement and subsequent election to the Cheyenne Council had left an opening at the top of the Volunteers, and it had come down to him, Maybourne or Simmons as to who got the job. Thankfully, the Council didn't put either one of those jackasses in charge.

Maybourne was a slimy son of a bitch, but at least he had a sense of duty. Simmons, on the other hand...

_If he cares about anyone but himself, I'll be damned._

"We've got some visitors from out west, all the way from New Vegas, they say. Their leader wants to meet with the Council. She says it's important."

"Council's busy. She'll have to make an appointment like any other outsider that wants a chat," Mitchell pointed out. "Why are you calling me about it?"

"Because - well... I think the Council will want to meet her. Make an exception. She's not just some random traveller - she's well armed, got some sort of pre-war military armor, fancy looking stuff. And her buddies... plus - she claims to be Victoria Fernandez."

Mitchell furrowed his brow. "Where have I heard that name before?"

"According to some of the traders we've talked to, and what our scouts have said about what the Legion says, she's the woman who killed Caesar, Lanius and a whole bunch of other Legionaries at Second Hoover Dam. Broke the whole army. She's a big deal out west, if what they say is true."

"They also say she's ten feet tall and has orange hair, if I remember right," Mitchell pointed out.

"Well, she doesn't look like that," Davis conceded. "But she matches - more or less - the more realistic descriptions we have for her. And sure, she could just be someone taking the name, but she sure as hell isn't from Legion territory, and she doesn't have the accent to be from Kansas or Nebraska. Plus... I believe her."

_Well that's something_. One of the reasons Davis was over there on greeting duty was that it was basically impossible to lie to him. Guy had a real knack for picking up lies, half-truths, deception, whole kit and kaboodle. He could tell who was a refugee and who was some would be Legion spy - the Warlord running Denver had tried to send two of his own knock-off _Frumentarii _into the camp, and Davis had been the one to stop them.

"If she can lie to you, she deserves a meeting with the Council on that alone," Mitchell mused. "Did she say what she wants?"

"Not really. She mentioned she's willing to pay for the Council's time," there was a pause, then, "one of her buddies mentioned something about a 'Project Blue Book'... whatever the heck that is."

Mitchell stiffened.

_Crap._

That was a name he knew. He didn't know what it meant, but he knew it was related to the levels of the mountain no-one, not in two hundred years, had ever been able to crack. The first eleven underlevels of the mountain had been his ancestors home the first ten years after the bombs dropped, before limited resettlement of the surface began.

Today, of course, most of the population of Cheyenne lived above ground, in the ruins of the mountain or the grounds outside the former base, but the richest still lived underground, and the Council and all the rest of the official work of the city was done down here.

Extensive searching of the surviving computer archives of the base had turned up only a little information on those sealed sublevels, beneath NORAD. A highly classified, expensive project, powered by it's own advanced fusion generators, with a closed computer system, and...

That was about it. Those limited records carried an implicit suggestion that there could be a lot of tech in there, even more than what was salvaged from NORAD or Fort Carson had motivated people to try, but... the doors just wouldn't budge. Shishkabobs and flamethrowers and a whole host of other weapons had been tried. Everything short of a Fat Man, and when someone had suggested trying that, the idiot had been nearly thrown in prison for sheer stupidity.

These days, the existence of the Project and what was theories about what was there was a closely guarded secret - the Council, the Colonel of the CDV and a few other top people. Probably some others knew about it too, but they weren't _supposed_ to know.

"Sir?"

Mitchell shook his head as he realized he'd just been sitting there quiet for a minute. "I'll talk to the Council, see what they think. She does sound like she might be worth their time. Anyone who can freak the Legion out like that is worth it."

**Council Chambers, Cheyenne Mountain Underlevel 7**

**Six Months After the NCR Victory at Second Hoover Dam**

Drinks with Jenny had proven quite fruitful. Not only had the woman filled her in on lots of the details about Cheyenne, Fort Carson and the surrounding area, but she'd been pleasant company for the evening, and then even more so when they'd gone up to her room afterwards.

Cheyenne's history was interesting - members of the US Air force and their families had taken refuge in the underlevels of NORAD after the first bombs fell and while plenty did not make it - supposedly some high-muckety-muck from D.C. had been on his way to the base that morning and never arrived, according to old legend, but all told, some three hundred people had taken refuge in the base. Missiles had hit several places around Colorado springs, and nearly hit the mountain itself, which was a wreck, barely a mountain anymore, in some ways.

There'd been ample supplies - NORAD had been designed to withstand nuclear war, after all. Still, it wasn't enough for them to stay forever. But the radiation had cleared enough after the first year that people in power armor could start salvaging on the surface. That kept them in scavenged food, from wasteland life and from prepackaged stuff. It wasn't very safe, and they had a lot of cancer that first generation and the one after it, but they lived. Eventually, they partially moved to the surface, accepted (carefully and with judicious judgement) some survivors and held off raiders with all the weaponry they had access to - including ten suits of T-45 Power Armor, and one suit of T-51. Energy weapons, plasma weapons, tons of ammo for both, and more mundane options. They'd never gone a-conquering, but for a time, they had tried to play peacemaker for the region before deciding it wasn't worth the effort.

The rise of the Legion had been a problem, especially as they drew closer to Denver - the Hangdog tribe had traded with Cheyenne-based merchants a lot, selling what the salvaged from the ruins of Denver in exchange for food or other goods from Cheyenne, but the Legion had stopped expanding after Denver - a few skirmishes had gone Cheyenne's way without any casualties, and Caesar wanted New Vegas and Hoover Dam.

But even with the Legion there and nominally hostile, there'd been trading with the settlements under the Legion's control, as well as trade with settlements further south and east. Pueblo, Dodge, traders from Cheyenne had gone as far as Kansas City, a great commercial entrepôt, of sorts. The whole region all the way to the extremely toxic and nearly uncrossable waters of the Mississippi was mostly small towns, rural and semi-civilized (or less) tribes, a handful of large cities, raider bands. Merchants travelling together in caravans for safety, small scale conflicts and living on the edge was the norm, but it wasn't any worse than some of areas on the edge of NCR, mostly. No real center of organization.

The most interesting fact was that supposedly, somewhere far north, in what had been Minnesota - Victoria had seen enough pre-war maps of the US - there was...

Well, the Brotherhood of Steel. Or at least, some sort of power-armored, isolationist and tech-obsessed group called the Brotherhood. Jenny had only really heard rumors about it from people who'd heard rumors about it and so on. She knew a decent amount about the rest of Colorado and Kansas, and the nearest parts of Nebraska beyond that, it was most hearsay and rumor.

The whole evening and night had been fruitful, and she'd swapped stories with Jenny, telling her about her journeys around the West, especially in the Mojave.

The next day, Lt. Davis had told them the Council was willing to meet with them, and so they'd trekked the five miles to the ruins of the mountain - the whole place was blasted out, wrecked. Not as bad as the Big Empty, but still, a wreck and a ruin. But the people had made do and the mountain was covered in houses, built from the stone of the mountain, salvaged rubble and bits and pieces from the wasteland, structures made from welded wrecks of Vertibirds destroyed by time or the bombs, and a whole lot more. The people of Cheyenne had proven quite skilled at rebuilding their salvaged little corner of the wasteland.

She'd been asked to leave her friends on the surface, and she'd been disarmed when she entered the mountain before being taken down a still working elevator to the 7th level.

She still had one of her pistols left, the .357 she'd taken from Bison Steve's, hidden on her person, but hopefully this would go peacefully.

"Councillors," Colonel Cameron Mitchell, the polite, soft-spoken commander of the CDV that had greeted her as she stepped off the elevator to the 7th floor, said as they stepped into a conference room, the seven members of the Cheyenne Council - one elected every year, the seats having staggered seven year terms - sitting around the table.

Her eyes immediately gravitated towards one, a bald, grandfatherly looking man. A bit fat, but only just. He sat at the far end of the table from her, the chairman of the Council's meetings for the month by random selection.

George Hammond, former Colonel of the CDV.

"May I introduce Victoria Fernandez," Colonel Mitchell finished.

"Thank you Colonel. Please, stay for this," Hammond said. He looked across the room at Victoria. "Miss Fernandez-"

"Please, Victoria," Victoria interrupted.

"Victoria, then," Hammond nodded. "We've heard a lot about you. Rumors and stories, mostly, of course."

"They're probably grossly exaggerated."

"But you did kill Lanius?" one of the other Councillors asked. "CDV scouts have seen the man, from a distance anyway. By all accounts he earned his brutal reputation."

"He was a beast of man, and I won't say it was easy to kill him, because it wasn't. And I had help, but yeah, I killed him."

"And Caesar?" The same councilor asked.

"Him too. I had something he wanted, he invited me to his base at The Fort to try to buy it from me. Not sure why he thought a woman born in the NCR would ever join up with him, but I supposed he thought I'd fall for his _scintillating_ personality." A few of the Councillors chuckled just a little at that. "We disagreed, and I emptied my pistol into his skull." And then had to fight her way out. In hindsight, that had been... ill-advised. She'd limped out of the Fort with a broken rib, a number of cuts and bullet wounds and a broken arm.

She'd been kept up by Med-X and stubborn will by the time she got back to Cottonwood cove, where her friends - Boone, Cass, Veronic and Arcade in particular, having been left behind at the Cove to deal with the Legionaries there while she met Caesar in complete bad faith, had kept her alive long enough for her to be carried back to the Autodoc at the Follower's Clinic on a makeshift litter.

It was still amazing to her she'd survived at all, and she knew how much she owed to her friends for that.

"It's an impressive track record," Hammond noted. "And now you're all the way out here. Looking for Project Blue Book. Why? Where did you hear about? What do you know about it?"

"So you guys do know about it," Victoria tensed a little. There wasn't an accusatory tone in Hammond's voice, nothing hostile - in fact, he came off entirely friendly - but she didn't like the way a few of the other councilors were looking at her.

_Plus, you don't ask 'where did you hear about it' for something innocuous._

"We know the name - and we know it's somewhere below Underlevel 11, but beyond that? Just a few isolated datapoints," another councillor noted.

_Interesting._

"You guys know of Mr. House, and his unfortunate passing just before Second Hoover Dam?" Victoria kept her hands crossed in front of her chest, affecting an air of nonchalance, but she could grab her gun if she needed to.

_Shoot Mitchell, try to hold these guys as hostages, if they decide to force an issue._ Hopefully she wouldn't have to.

It would be a waste of a whole trip, if things ended like that.

"He was the roboticist who ran New Vegas before the NCR took it over."

"Pretty much," Victoria nodded at Hammond's comment, not wanting to go into the whole 'two hundred years old' part. "He had a plan - he was hoping to play the NCR and Legion off against each other, reactivate an old pre-war army of robots - hundreds, maybe even more than a thousand - not just the few dozen he had on the Strip - and carve a little empire out for himself with New Vegas. That didn't work out for him. After his death, I went through his files. He had a plan. Ambitious, probably too ambitious, but a plan. One of the first steps once he'd secure the Mojave was to send a few hundred of his Securitrons out here, with some human employees, and secure whatever Project Blue Book was."

"Why did he want it?"

"I have no idea. But he deemed it essential." Victoria shrugged. "I can only assume he didn't write it down because he didn't see the need to. He knew the plan. Given his ambitions, I got curious. I've wandered all over the West, up into Montana, down into Baja, because I'm curious. I want to know what's out there."

"What he did have were command codes to unlock the sealed doors to Project Blue Book. Which I transfered to my PipBoy," she tapped the device in question. She saw one of the councillors get a greedy look she recognized quite well in his eyes. "And if anyone tries to take my Pipboy from me, it will lock down as soon as it leaves my arm. And then you'd need my password. You could wipe it to use it for a new owner, but that's it. Plus... lots of people have tried to take things from me. Only one man ever succeeded and he's very, very dead." Sleeping with Benny hadn't even been all that satisfying before she'd snapped his neck at the end of it.

"Cheyenne isn't in the habit of stealing from people," Hammond assured her. "But equally... this mountain is our home. I don't suppose you'd just be willing to _sell_ us the passcodes. We have quite a bit we can offer in trade."

"So I've seen," Victoria agreed, chuckling. "But no. I want to go down there myself, see what's down there. See what got House all hot and bothered. Sure, I'll admit the prospect of getting old world tech or rare items I could sell to a collector back in Vault City or Shady Sands or wherever was a bonus I was hoping for, but it's not why I crossed Legion territory."

Victoria dropped her hands to her side, then started to pace, gesticulating as she went on.

"I want to know what's down there. I'm happy to pay you just for the chance to see if the codes work." She was pretty sure they did. She knew House, before the war, had done work for the military. Lots of it. That had to be how he knew about Project Blue Book and had those codes, whatever it was.

"And if those codes do work, you guys can have the lion's share of any weapons or power armor or whatever is down there. I'm gonna want something for my trouble, if only so Veronica and Arcade have some Old World tech to play with, but I'm sure we can work something out." Victoria steepled her fingers and looked them over. "If you guys have gone 200 years without knowing what's down there, you have to be as curious as I am."

"I know I've always been," Hammond nodded. "I don't think you need to pay just to open the door." He looked around. "I move we allow Miss Victoria Fernandez to open the sealed door, if she can. If she does, she and her friends can go down and see what's there. We'll send Colonel Mitchell and three other members of the CDV down along with them. After we know what's down there, we can all decide how it can get divided and what we do with it."

He held up his hand slightly, resting his elbow on the table. "Do I have a second for the motion?" Another one of the councillors - the one who had asked her about killing Lanius - copied Hammond's gesture. "Okay, all in favor?" Hammond and the one who had seconded held up their hands, as did three other members. Two did not - the greedy councillor being one of them.

"The ayes have it, then," Hammond nodded. "Colonel Mitchell, pick your team and then take Victoria and her friends to the sealed door on underlevel 11. Let her have her weapons back as well. There's no telling what kind of defenses might have been left down there."

Colonel Mitchell nodded, "Understood Sir."

"Thank you for this," Victoria said with a slight nod to Hammond.

**Cheyenne Mountain Underlevel 11**

**D Plus 0, Project Blue Book Rediscovery**

**Six Months After the NCR Victory At Second Hoover Dam**

"This level's mostly just been where we store food in case of emergency," Mitchell explained as they approached the sealed door. He'd brought three people with him, as the Council had ordered. One Captain Sheppard, a Sergeant Wells and a Corporal Bosworth. There was a flashlight attached to the top of his gun.

"We don't even power the lights down here anymore, as a general rule," Mitchell added, as they made their way through the halls.

"Where do you get the power?" Victoria raised the brightness of her PipBoy screen a bit, making even better to light the way as she followed Mitchell - with Veronica, Arcade and Raul behind her.

"The base has pre-war fusion generators. Still going, though we have to be careful about using it. We've jerry-rigged smaller ones, using fissionable materials salvaged from cars or mini-nukes or the like, to supplement the big ones. Apparently this Project Blue Book had its own power supply."

They turned down another hallway. "It's just ahead," the Colonel explained. "Hammond showed me this when I took the job."

"I'm surprised this door is secret," Sheppard mused. "People come down here a lot."

"True, but there's nothing stored in this hallway," Mitchell said. "And no one stays down here longer than they have to." The light shined on a sealed blast door with 'C-11' emblazoned on in it peeling, faded white paint. Next to the door was a computer.

"Alright, here we go," Victoria walked up to the computer and hooked her pipboy to the computer, bringing up the saved command code - a long string of letters and numbers it would have been hell to try and enter manually - and set for input.

For a long moment, nothing happened, then a low grinding sound started, that increased in volume to a metallic screeching as the blast door in front of her started to lift, ancient gears and servos coming to life for the first time as the door moved after two centuries of neglect.

As the door lifted, the far side was revealed. As all their lights shone down the newly revealed speace, there was a short hallway and another elevator.

"You've got to be kidding me," Mitchell muttered. "Who wants to bet there'll be more hallway at the other end of this elevator?"

"Sucker's bet," Sheppard replied.

"That was the point," Mitchell countered. Victoria ignored them and approached the elevator. If Blue Book had its own power... she pushed the button and after a few moments, the elevator opened.

"Looks like there's only room for four people..." Victoria mused, stepping aside so everyone else could see what she meant. "Maybe five if we squeeze it." Ideally, it would be her and her friends that went down first, but that wasn't a viable solution, she knew. "How about this:" she started, thinking quickly. "Veronica, Mitchell, Sheppard and I go down first, then Raul, Arcade, Bosworth and Wells?"

Mitchell looked at his men, then nodded. "Makes sense." The four of them filed into the elevator and Victoria looked at the buttons. Numbers going from 12 to 27. No labels, but that made sense.

"Which floor?"

"Back in the days when NORAD lived up above, the more important stuff was lower down, so it would be safer from any attack," Mitchell suggested. "So let's go all the way down."

Victoria shrugged. Made as much sense as anything else. "Going down then," She pressed the button marked '27'. She nodded to Arcade, "Underlevel 27, meet you there."


	3. Stargate? Stargate

**Disclaimer:** Not mine, yada yada yada

I'll be using, as the story moves forward, some elements of the backstory for the Goa'uld and various system lords, as well as details on some planets (including ones that never showed up on the show) from the old Stargate SG-1 rpg. Albeit I will not be adopting them wholesale, because there are some things from the RPG that don't work with later canon or that I don't think quite make sense in general.

You don't need to read those books (long out of print as they are, they're hard to get/find), as anything pertinent will be explained as appropriate in the story, but if you run into some detail you don't recognize from the show, it could very well be from the RPG.

A lot of exposition here - I tried a few ideas out on how they figured all these details out, ultimately this was the best way to get it done, for what I want to do with this story. I tried to make it as entertaining as I could despite that.

Wasteland Gate

By Kylia

Chapter 3: Stargate? Stargate.

**Cheyenne Mountain Underlevel 27 **

**D Plus 0, Project Blue Book Rediscovery**

Victoria had found pre-war ruins that still had functioning lights, so she wasn't surprised when she found out that there were still lights on in the base when they stepped out of the elevator into a hallway. The hallway was marked by paint labeling it with a letter and number, but she had no idea what it meant.

She was surprised for a moment that the paint was still there, unfaded, but only for a moment.

_With no exposure to the elements... even most of the paper records here could be intact and readable._ Pre-war paper was surprisingly durable, but after centuries of exposure on the surface, lots of books and files and papers and magazines were still too damaged to be readable. Down here...

_Maybe I should give the Followers a message when I'm done here._ Assuming they found anything they'd be interested in.

"Damn, they really knew how to make power run before the war," Mitchell mused as they looked through the hall. With the lights still quite dim, he didn't turn off the light on his gun as he stood there.

"Fusion Generators were set to replace all other power demands in the entire U.S, before the bombs dropped," Veronica explained. "A lot of them are still running, even after this long."

"Still - I mean, if we hadn't supplemented out generators with other sources, we'd have run out of power a while ago," Mitchell pointed out. "And we keep power off in places nobody is. Who's been down here for the last 200 years?"

"Hopefully not an army of feral ghouls or security robots," Victoria grinned. Well, robots wouldn't be so bad, but if it turned out to be feral ghouls, she was going to be very unhappy with the universe.

_How does something so fucking rotten run so goddamn fast?!_

Rather than waiting for Arcade, Raul and the other two to get the elevator and come down to join them, Victoria headed down the hall, slowly and cautiously, one hand on her gun as she held her Pipboy out ahead of her, lighting the way.

The floor was also painted with various colored lines, leading to different locations. She looked over at Mitchell and Sheppard.

"Know what these mean?"

Mitchell shook his head, "Not a clue."

"Well... let's just pick a direction and start going," Victoria brought up her Pipboy map, though wouldn't just automatically generate one immediately. She'd have to wander around this place a while as it passively collected data and made the map. Or she could find a terminal with a map on it...

The hallway took a turn into a large, open room with a conference table and a number of chairs around it, and a projector pointed at one blank, unadorned wall painted white. There was a window, of all things, looking over onto a large open room...

Victoria squinted and looked out the window - at the far end of the open room below was a massive stone ring, easily big enough for a Deathclaw to walk through without crouching... a ramp led up to it, as if people were to walk up that ramp to the ring.

"Ten caps says that's whatever Project Blue Book was all about," Sheppard said, walking up beside her.

"Sucker's bet," Victoria said, without looking away from the ring. "What the hell is it?"

"Only way to find out is to find a computer and see what they have to say," Veronica pointed out. "Looks impressive, whatever it is."

Victoria turned around and approached a door on the opposite end of the briefing room to the window. It had a placard on it:

**OFFICE OF GENERAL W. O. WEST, USAF**

**BASE COMMANDER, SGC**

"Or maybe we can just open the General's office," Victoria grabbed onto the handle of the steel door, but it wouldn't budge. She felt around underneath the handle, and instead of a keyhold, found some sort of electronic card reader.

"Or not," Victoria said after another moment. "Maybe we can find a keycard - if nothing else, I'm sure we can Shiskabob the door open, doesn't look as solid as the blast door up top. But let's keep that as a fallback." She looked around and saw the staircase going down in the corner of the room.

Before she could walk over to it, she heard the ding of the Elevator and a minute later, Arcade, Raul and the other two CDV soldiers walked into the room. Arcade went over to the window, looking out over the ring.

"What on Earth?" Arcade finally asked after a long moment.

"Not a super weapon... unless somehow that ring fires nukes or FEV."

Arcade shook his head, "Given the pre-war government, I wouldn't put it past them, but..." he trailed off. "Probably not."

"Well, let's see if we can't get the computers here working," Victoria headed down the tightly spiraled staircase into another room, this one level with the big ring - it too had another window looking out onto it. It also was a room _filled_ with computers of all sorts, all of them still active. Only one of them was unlocked, though, and it was displaying a whole host of numbers and symbols that Victoria couldn't make heads nor tails of.

"Arcade, Veronica," she called the two over, "Can you guys make any sense of this?" She stepped aside for the Brotherhood Scribe and Follower Doctor look at the information.

"Only a little..." Veronica said. "At least not without more context. Looks like power regulation information..." she turned away from the computer screen and looked back to the ring. "I think that... thing is consuming power or at least, has a lot of power running through it on standby..." she trailed off then looked back to the computer screen. "I've never seen math like this before."

"I have, once..." Arcade said, stepping back. "I don't really understand it any better than you Veronica, but it's... I read part of a paper that covered this." He paused, closing one hand into a fist and pressing it to his mouth for a long moment as he obviously tried to remember. "Dr. Carter, that's it." Victoria looked at him pointedly, and everyone else seemed to be following suit.

"Right," He said after another moment. "Sorry - Doctor Samantha Carter. She's part of OSI - she stopped by the Old Mormon Fort once, a few months after the NCR won at First Hoover Dam. Her job is working on power generation for the NCR - especially getting old nuclear reactors working efficiently, but her real passion is old Pre-War Astrophysics."

"Astro...physics?" Mitchell raised an eyebrow. "Physics is all... inertia and gravity and atoms and... the Bomb, right? I didn't really pay that much attention in that part of school. What's... Astrophysics?"

"The physics of well... up there," Arcade pointed upwards. "Space."

"Space?" Victoria stared at him. "Space physics?"

"Yeah," Arcade shrugged, "She finds the topic fascinating - said she just likes to study it for fun. I know a guy who loves to read books on cats, even though cats are completely extinct. It's not uncommon in the Followers - I read all those socioeconomic theory texts after all."

"Yeah, but that's actually... _useful_." Victoria pointed out.

"Well, I'd say Dr. Carter's hobby would be useful now. She stopped by the Fort to trade - copy anything we had on pre-war Astrophysics for copies of what she had. Julie agreed to the trade, so we did it. I tried reading one of the pre-war academic articles on the topic. I couldn't understand it, not really, but the math in it... it looked pretty much exactly like this math here."

"Huh. Well, she's not here now. Let's see if we can't get these computers open..." She walked over to another one, started fiddling with the keyboard, trying to get around the need for a password, but even after she hacked her way past the first layer, there was an almost unprecedented second, more complicated layer of security.

She could probably figure out her way around it, spoof the computer into thinking she was an authorized user...

Her eyes traveled back to her Pipboy. "It can't be that simple?" She cooked her Pipboy to the computer, and then brought up the command code again, entering it into the system through her wrist-mounted little computer.

Sure enough, it worked. There was a low humming sound, then a sudden jolt as all the lights in the room turned on, the unexpected glare forcing everyone to look down and shield their eyes, but then after a long moment, they adjusted and looked around. They had a much better view of the ring, and it seemed to be covered in... symbols? All around the outer edge of it. She turned her eyes away from it to look at the computers, which were starting to display a pixel-made logo of some sort, and then two words:

"Stargate Command?" Victoria looked at the computer. _SGC?_

Victoria sat down at one of the computers, being carefully as she lowered herself into the seat in case it suddenly collapsed on her, but whoever had made this chair had made it well enough to last 200 years in a sealed environment.

The computer files were not helpfully arranged and labeled - or at least, there was no file labeled 'What Our Secret Base Does', but after a moment, she pulled one up.

Then she read it.

Then she read it again.

Then she opened another data-file.

And another.

And another.

Her eyes darted to her pipboy and she realized everyone in the room reading had been doing so silently for over an hour.

She looked around, and saw Veronica, Arcade, Raul - and Mitchell and his men all doing the same, and at a guess, the looks of confusion - raised eyebrows, furrowed brows, wide eyes, sheer disbelief written across their faces - were probably akin to the one on her face.

"Am I... am I the only one seeing this?" Victoria asked slowly, looking back to her screen. "Or was whoever was at this workstation writing a really bad novel?"

"I..." Veronica said after a moment. "I mean... this..." she typed away at the computer for a long moment. "I mean, there's only one way to find out, right?"

"Are you-" Victoria started, and then the floor shook slightly - only for a second though - as the Ring in the other room started to spin.

"VERONICA!" Victoria jumped to her feet, "What the hell!?"

"There's only one way to know if this is all true, and that's by... dialing this stargate. And seeing if a wormhole forms and I can't even believe I'm using that word - it's like I'm living some Captain Cosmos comic..." Veronica sounded giddy.

"And if we have some bug-eyed alien coming through that... thing," Mitchell gestured to the ring vaguely, "because you opened it?"

"Well, then we kill it," Veronica said, putting her power fist back on, "but if I'm reading the files I found right, the wormholes are one way for people travelling through."

"You could have warned us before you went and decided to do this on your own, Veronica!" Victoria snapped. She loved Veronica's occasionally impulsive attitude some times.

This was not one of them.

"Well, it's a little late now," Arcade said as a fifth symbol got locked in. _Just two more..._

"So... we're gonna open a portal to an alien planet. Know anything about it?"

"Not a clue," Veronica admitted. "I just picked an address at random - I wasn't proposing we just walk through it right this second. This is just... proof of concept." The seventh symbol locked in and then, with a roaring 'whoosh' sound, a geyser of water seemed to erupt from the ring - the Stargate - and then the thing calmed down, seeming to be just a cool, horizontal expanse of water, trapped in the confines of the Stargate itself...

"Okay..."

"Power consumption is up, massively," Arcade reported, looking back to the originally unlocked terminal. "I think."

"So it's doing something... and it's not exploding... that's something," Sheppard observed.

"But it could just be a _lujoso_ light show," Raul pointed out. "Something's got to go through..."

"They had to have something that could send through," Veronica sat back down quickly, and hurriedly typed away at the screen before finally finding something. "Looks like they used... Eyebots. We don't have ED-E anymore... but..." Veronica kept banging away. "There was a whole unit of Protectrons and Mr. Gutsy's stationed inside that room at one point. But not anymore - but there is a Protectron still in a charging dock... looks like it's weapons don't work anymore, but if I booted it up I could command it to go through the Stargate - it could communicate back to us... in theory. Or at least we'd know if it even does send things at all..."

She looked over at Victoria, "Should I?"

Victoria inhaled sharply. Reactivating old robots as always a risky bet, if you didn't go in and replace the command drives with ones you'd personally refitted and reformated, or so she gathered.

But if she could command it from here...

"Send it through, I guess..." Victoria said after a long moment, taking a deep breath. "Everyone, be ready in case that robot decides to shoot us... and if it still has working weapons somehow."

Veronica typed in a series of commands, then Victoria watched as a Protectron charging port opened up and the Protectron started talking, it's robotic, modulated voice coming through loud and clear.

"Powering up... Gateroom Defense Protectron On Duty... all hostile incoming forces will be eliminated..." Veronica pressed enter on her new string of commands. The Protectron stopped mid-step, then resumed moving, but this time started moving towards the ramp.

"New orders received: Proceeding through Stargate." The Protectron started to walk, slowly, slowly up the ramp, towards the Stargate, and then through it - one moment it was there, walking into water... the next moment nothing.

A few seconds later, Veronica spoke again "the computer is giving me a confirmation: 'Protectron through'. And I am getting a response sending a signal through to it. On the other side of that... that wormhole there is a Protectron, and it is sending a signal back. I couldn't tell you what things are like there... but it is there." She cut off the signal and a few moments later the wormhole vanished.

"So... wormholes. Space. Stargate. Is this freaking cool or what?" Veronica started giggling. "This is an even better gift than that dress. Are there aliens? Tell me there's aliens!"

**Briefing Room, Cheyenne Mountain Underlevel 27 **

**D Plus 3, Project Blue Book Rediscovery**

"Okay... so let me see if I understand this," Councilor Hammond said, holding his hands up a bit as he looked at Victoria and Mitchell. "You've taken twenty-three people off their posts and patrols on the surface, and authorized funds to pay for the time of four of our best scientific minds over the last three days... all because that device," he pointed out the window into the Gate Room.

"Is called a Stargate and is capable of moving from one planet to another. Other planets."

"That would be about the shape of it, Sir," Mitchell nodded, sounding a little sheepish. "I know how it sounds but..."

"I should have asked for the long version," Hammond said, sounding like he was saying it to himself as much as anyone else. "Start from the beginning, don't spare any details."

Victoria nodded. "In 1928, Archeologists at Giza, in Egypt-"

"Egypt?"

"Ancient country, even older than the original Rome, in Northern Africa, apparently." NORAD had had plenty of maps of the world, so at least Victoria was pretty sure Hammond would know about Africa. Lots of people in the Wasteland _maybe_ knew the name 'China', but not any context, or even that there were continents. Cheyenne was a reasonably well educated town, but still.

Geography was probably not that important.

Victoria continued: "They found this... Stargate buried beneath a coverstone that was at least 5,000 years old at the time, and it was made of something not of this Earth. Eventually the US military got their hands on it. They tried several times to figure out what it was on and off, but mostly it just gathered dust until the 2060s, when they realized it must be some sort of transportation device." She looked back to Arcade and Veronica.

"What did the scientists call it in the logs you guys found?"

"Ah - the substance the Stargate is made up, apparently called 'Naquadah'" Arcade stumbled over the unfamiliar word for a moment, then went on, "it apparently is capable of generating and storing vast amounts of energy. Wormholes have been theorized since the 1930s... I think - not an expert," he took a breath and went on: "the gate is capable of holding all that and using it to... punch a hole in space-time, creating an artificial, stable wormhole that connects to a Stargate on another planet."

"There are more of these?" Hammond turned to look at the two.

"Yes - many more. The SGC wasn't actually sure _how_ many... but lots. All over the Galaxy. Planets tens of thousands of light years away," Veronica confirmed.

"Okay... and they could connect to us?"

"Absolutely - if they had the 'address' for our planet. Every planet has one - a string of six symbols plus a seventh one that serves as the 'point of origin'. Don't ask me why we need that, this really isn't my field... at all," Arcade went on. "But yes - anyone could dial this planet and come here."

"And it's right beneath the town..." Hammond said, with wonder. He turned back to Victoria: "Go on."

"In early 2077, with the help of a guy named Dr. Daniel Jackson, they figured it out, they cracked the code. They sent a mission through the gate, to the one address they had at the time - a planet called Abydos, as it turns out. The mission was to find out if there were threats to the United States but also to find a planet to move population to in the event of nuclear war."

"So... like the Vaults?"

"But not designed by psychos who wanted to know what happened when you poured oil on a fire," Mitchell drawled.

"Basically. On Abydos... they found... people."

"Intelligent alien life? How much more like an issue of _Captain Cosmos_ can this sound?"

"Not exactly," Victoria hesitated. "We found some photos," she handed one to Hammond - smiling people, dressed in weird robes she'd never seen, in a desert enviroment, standing with two people in full army gear - fatigues, combat armor, helmets, the works. "They found people. Human people."

"On another planet... in 2077. I know humans went to the Moon, I read old magazines about it once, but... we never went to..." he snapped his fingers, "the red planet, has the same name as the Legion's god."

"Mars," Arcade supplied. Hammond let out a deep sigh and nodded.

"No, no we hadn't... apparently," Victoria had known about the Moon since she was a teenager, but she hadn't even known Mars was a planet until Arcade had mentioned it back when she'd been killing Legionaries all over the Mojave.

"Anyway," She shook her head a little and went back on topic. "Apparently - and this is what they learned over the course of that mission, with a lot of help from Dr. Jackson's translation of ancient writings, some alien came to Earth thousands of years ago and... using his technology he pretended to be a God. The Ancient Egyptian God 'Ra', apparently. He took slaves from Earth to countless other planets - he and the rest of his species. And then 5,000 years ago, or so, people on Earth rebelled, buried the Stargate and Ra just... never got around to flying back here in his spaceship."

"Humans on other worlds..." Hammond looked like he was working through the logical consequences of that.

Humans on lots of other worlds meant those worlds could have humans on them. Victoria had learned a lot more about space than she'd ever wanted to know before, but apparently, Humans needed certain specific things to survive on other planets without very specialized equipment.

If countless other worlds could support human life.

_Then there's countless places people could go._

Unlike had been, she wasn't quite so sure that some sort of wholesale abandonment of Earth was desirable... the Wasteland was hell, but it was home, and... the notion of rebuilding the world, claiming it back from the tribes and raiders and monstrous wildlife and just the... devastation that had claimed it.

The NCR's efforts to do that, imperfect as they were, were inspiring. Cheyenne was doing the same, as was every other successful settled community in the Wasteland.

But still...

A place safe from deathclaws, and radscorpions and feral ghouls and and all the other monsters of the Wasteland. A place free of radiation - where food free of radiation could be grown and people could live lives free of it? Completely? Or at least more so

And Cheyenne, in essence, controlled the Stargate. And all the potential - they did have all those refugees coming in, after all, and sooner or later Fort Carson wouldn't be able to support more.

Plus...

The food grown could be... well...

_Sold_. And Cheyenne could get a piece of that trade. One didn't have to be some greedy bastard to see the value in that. Not to mention other things from other planets that might have value.

_Back on track, girl._

"On Abydos... Ra showed up."

"The same Ra that... came to Earth thousands of years ago?"

"He claimed to be - his species could just be really long lived or even immortal, like Ghouls, or maybe he was lying. Regardless... he was not happy to learn that Earth had technology that could be dangerous to him, when he captured US soldiers on Abydos. He was getting ready to take his ship to Earth and... I guess, destroy us. Instead, the expedition team... blew up his ship. With a nuke. While it was in space, above the planet."

"Thus, the one and only time since 1945 that the use of a nuke was a good idea," Mitchell suggested. This was where he took over from Victoria: "Afterwards, the Air Force started setting up facilities on Abydos. A whole new base. And they started exploring other planets. They found a list of addresses on Abydos. Hundreds of them, apparently, but they had to... account for the fact that planets move... so they only had a few working addresses back then, before the bombs dropped. The program has been running ever since and apparently we have all of them, now."

"So... we could go through the Stargate," Mitchell finished.

"Without knowing what's on the other side?"

"No, we can know that, actually," Veronica stepped forward to answer Hammond's question, speaking quickly but with self-assurance. This was something she knew well. "Assuming we can salvage some Eyebots or something like that, anyway. They used Eyebots equipped with advanced sensors to... check the planets. Make sure there was nothing hostile around the Stargate on the other end, that we could breathe, the temperature - everything. With the right circuits and other salvaged parts... I could jury-rig something like that, based on the schematics in the base computers," she shrugged helplessly. "Assuming we could get an Eyebot. Either a working one or one that's been scrapped I could try to fix up and reactivate."

"You could do that?"

"If it involves pre-war Tech, I can fix almost anything," Veronica said, smiling a little at the prospect of all the pre-war tech here. What was left of it.

"There's one other thing to consider - on October 23, 2077, when the Bombs dropped, records show some 212 people were here, in the SGC. Support staff, soldiers, scientists... and yet there's not one body," Victoria cut in. "We've searched most of the base - there's no bodies."

"They went through the stargate, obviously," Hammond surmised.

"That's what the records say. They went through to Abydos, which already had personnel on site, and lots of material and tech. They took almost everything they could that wasn't nailed down, wiped all records of Abydos's address from the base computers." Hammond raised an eyebrow, and Victoria continued, "there's no record of _why_, I'm guessing they were worried someone might break in? Maybe they thought the Chinese would come after the bombs... or mutants or just... regular people they didn't want to come with them."

_This is the pre-war government that made the Enclave, after all..._

"But... who knows what happened with them, but they could be out there too. There was power armor stationed here. At least twenty suits of T-60, possibly more. Plasma weapons, laser rifles, a whole host of robots, including Sentry Bots... who knows it if all stayed on Abydos. But on top of that, there's aliens... alien technology. Worlds entirely free of radiation."

Victoria started to pace, gesticulating: "I became a courier because I wanted to explore, wander see what the world had become, see what was just over the horizon. And now we have this - this Stargate is _the_ ultimate horizon. And the potential that what's out there could pay itself countless times over. This is every salvaging expedition into pre-war ruins times... a million! You guys own the Gate. I'm not going to suggest otherwise - your town, your half-ruined mountain, your Stargate. But... I want to go through it. I'm not asking for all the profit of it... just a salary or commission - or hell," she said, realizing she didn't even care about the money, "I'll just do it for free, if I can get at my caps in the NCR. I've got plenty. Just... that..." she gestured towards the gate somewhat helplessly.

"Just let me go through that - and come back, obvious... but - think about the _possibilities_ out there. Sooner or later Fort Carson will run out of room for refugees - there's always people driven out of their homes, by raiders or monsters or just the environment. You can send your own people with me to make sure I don't try to hold anything back but you can't just ignore-" Victoria realized she probably sounded like a ranting madwoman as she started to really get into it, talking faster and faster but she couldn't stop herself or even calm down. She had to make sure they understood what could be at stake.

_I need to go through that Stargate!_

"Miss Fernandez, you don't need to keep convincing me," Hammond interrupted her, grinning. "I'm sold. And I'm fairly certain I can sell the rest of the Council. I know of a few traders who might be able to source us an Eyebot in some form. Pick a planet, prepare for the mission... and you have a go." He held out a hand and Victoria shook it.

_Holy shit!_ She felt like letting out a giddy noise of glee like Veronica was sometimes prone to, but she managed to hold it in.

"Thank you Sir. I promise you won't regret this." One way or another, she'd make sure he didn't.

She was going to get to go to another planet.

_In your face, every other courier in the Wasteland!_


	4. Second First Contact - Twice

**Disclaimer:** I own neither Stargate Sg-1 nor Fallout New Vegas

And here we have it, the first trip through the gate and the arrival on another world.

The show never really does adequately explain how everyone speaks English. For TV purposes, it made sense, as it would have been a waste of time for Daniel to have to translate the local dialect every episode. And I have no interest in having to deal with that either. I'm going to stick with the common fanon convention that the Stargate translates most spoken languages of people who pass through it. Goa'uld, Abydonian, and some other languages, for various reasons, don't translate, but given that the Ancients made the Gates so simple for even primitives to use, they presumably wanted diverse cultures and communities to interact, and that means translation.

So there.

The problem with most any explanation for pre-war Stimpacks is that it doesn't explain how the kind you can make really work - either the NV kind of the Fallout 4 kind. It's basically a lot of bullshit, but most of the 'science' of the Fallout verse is utter nonsense, so I came up with my own bullshit explanation - albeit hardly a unique one.

Wasteland Gate

By Kylia

Chapter 4: Second First Contact - Twice

**Embarkation Room, Cheyenne Mountain Underlevel 28**

**D Plus 8, Project Blue Book Rediscovery**

In the end, it had taken the better part of five days to get everything ready. More personnel and supplies had been moved down to the lower levels of the mountain, but Victoria wasn't sure if that was the wisest idea. In the long term, if they wanted to use the Stargate to settle other worlds and bring back resources, the elevator up and down the mountain's underlevels wasn't exactly the most efficient.

Fortunately, the ceiling could retract, and the crane system that had been used to lower the Stargate down here to begin with was still intact. But they'd need a better place to put it, and there was no solid conclusion on that just yet.

_Besides, as long as its down here, Cheyenne can control it better._ That wasn't nothing. And moving all the computers that hooked up to the Stargate to dial it weren't very mobile either.

But there had been too much to do to seriously discuss that issue - Veronica had had to create the elaborate sensor system to put on an Eyebot jury-rigged from scrap and cannibalized machinery, and Cheyenne had had to buy an Eyebot for her to put the system on. The Dealer who sold it to them had been told they were in the market for more, and he'd said he might be able to find more, assuming the money remained good.

Then they'd had to get supplies - old pre-war antibiotics, kept under lock and key for emergencies. The new stuff they made using old world formulas modified based on what was available, and new remedies based on all sorts of approaches, did for most needs, but there were still some old-world medicines left. Doctor Janet Frasier, the doctor now assigned to the lower levels had deemed the possibility of alien viruses enough to merit breaking them out of storage. She was also talking about quarantine, for when they came back.

Food, water, stimpacks - old world and new knock-offs that were maybe half as good on a good day - ammo and more. On the ammo front, they were doing surprisingly well. One of the things Stargate Command had had, apparently, was it's own ammunition forge. As long as you fed the raw materials in, it could make ammunition quickly and effectively, far faster than anyone Victoria knew of - except maybe the Gun Runners. It was hard to say with them.

The ammo forge could possibly also be repurposed to make other things - Veronica and Raul were far from sure about that, but they thought it might. Raul was staying behind on the base to help Cheyenne's people repair, maintain and just plain understand all the systems at work in the SGC. Veronica, on the other hand, was coming through. Arcade as well. Along with Captain Sheppard and two of the CDV's guys - the same Wells and Bosworth from before.

A six man team to go through this Stargate and see what the hell was on the other side.

"Dialing the Stargate Now," Walter Harriman, a civilian bureaucracy that worked for Hammond said over the intercom into the Embarkation room, pressing keys into the computer. Victoria watched, still somewhat awed as the stargate dialed - the base didn't shake as much this time, now that the stabilizers had been fixed, but it was loud.

"Next time, let's not be in this room when the gate is dialed," Victoria half-shouted over the noise of the symbols locking into place.

"Good plan," Sheppard agreed, just as loudly. Victoria turned back to the gate as the seventh and final symbol locked in, and the Gate 'whooshed' outward again, before the blue, shimmering, seeming pool of water appeared in the gate. "Sure we're not gonna get wet walking through that?"

"It's not actually water, it just looks like it," Arcade assured him. "It's the event horizon of the wormhole. We pass through it, we arrive on another planet." _after getting taken apart and put back together._ She'd experienced that when she'd been zapped away to Big MT, so she knew it was safe... but she wasn't looking forward to it. Not at all.

"Sending Eyebot 1 through," Harriman said, and sure enough, the eyebot, unpainted and unadorned save for the sensor array all around it, on the top and bottom of the round little robot, flew through the... 'event horizon'.

"Eyebot 1 is through," Harriman said after a moment. "Picking up reading from the sensors... atmosphere breathable... temperature... computer says everything is safe. No sign of radiation."

"No radiation?" Bosworth grinned, "Sounds like paradise to me." Was hard to find anywhere in the Wasteland with _no_ residual radiation, even if it wasn't enough to hurt.

But now...

Now they could go somewhere that had none.

"Miss Fernandez," Hammond said. "It would seem you and your team have a go."

"Alright!" Victoria let out a small cheer. "See you on the other side," She grinned, feeling giddy. Then, running up the ramp, she all but dove through the Stargate, running at top speed...

**Unknown Planet**

**D Plus 8, Project Blue Book Rediscovery**

...only to crash, nearly headfirst, onto soft earth, as nausea threatened to leave her heaving her lunch out onto the...

_Grass?_

Nausea still gripping at her, and her hands a little pained from barely managing to break her fall, Victoria looked beneath her. Grass. She looked up.

Green. Green everywhere - no trees, but bushes, grass, small plants... they were in some wide, seemingly empty expanse, a forest of more trees than she'd seen even in Zion

_It's like Arroyo..._But even better.

_Was this what Earth could be like before the bombs?_ Not everywhere would have been like that but...

Still.

Victoria pushed herself to her feet and staggered forward, catching herself on the edge of some black... _thing_ as she heard a rippling sound behind her, and the sound of Arcade, Veronica and the other three making noises of nausea.

"I think I'm gonna be sick," Veronica said, "Urk..." No one actually threw up as Victoria felt her stomach calm a little and she straightened up, looking around more.

The Eyebot was still floating there, waiting for further instructions, beeping occasionally. Swallowing her bile before she could actually vomit, gagging a little at the heat of it going back down, Victoria looked at her Pipboy, wondering if it could at least figure out where north on this planet was.

_That involves... what, magnets or something?_ She thought she remembered reading about how magnets and magnetism was a way to find north, or something like that.

Maybe?

_Okay, maybe we didn't think all of this through._ Then again, Not thinking her adventures through was kind of her thing, and at some point, you just had to take a leap. _Before the War, the US knew all sorts of things about all this we just don't..._ Arcade's passing acquaintance Dr. Carter notwithstanding, she doubted if there were ten people in all the Wasteland, _anywhere_, who knew any meaningful old world science about other planets or space or anything like that.

Her Pipboy at least seemed to _think_ it knew which way was north. "Assuming my Pipboy knows what the hell it's talking about," Victoria said, turning ninety degrees to the right and pointing ahead of her, "that way is north." She looked around, taking in all the green.

"Imagine if we could get Brahmin here?" She mused. "Look at all this grass." It was long, and untamed, going halfway up to their knees in a few places.

"They'd certainly have a lot to eat." Sheppard agreed. He looked around. "You know - shouldn't this planet have a name?"

"Based on the code the Air Force assigned planets based on addresses, it was P2J-something something," Victoria answered, absently, looking around for more signs of regular travel. She was used to tracking in the desert sands or at least places a hell of a lot drier and with less vegitation than this planet.

"P2J-518," Arcade supplied.

"Doesn't really roll off the tongue. Why don't we call it... Verdant?" Sheppard suggested. Victoria looked up at him, raising her eyebrow. "You know, for all the green."

"It's unlikely the _entire_ planet is green," Arcade pointed out. "The planet is probably like Earth - different biomes in different areas based on climate."

"True, but we're not going to actually look at the entire planet, now are we?" Victoria looked back down at her Pipboy, fiddling with the dials on the off-chance there were any detectable transmissions on radio waves in range. _Maybe we should bring some more sensitive equipment, set it up when we arrive?_

But how to make it man-portable? Victoria made a mental note to ask Veronica about that.

"Hammond gave us a seven-day window to scout and report back," Victoria went on, "So at the very most, we could go three days in one direction, then three days back, give or take." That still left an obvious question. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sheppard take a pair of Binoculars from Bosworth and look through them, checking the horizon.

"Looks like there's... something off to the northwest. Call it... three miles? Maybe a little more or less. Assuming this planet is the size of Earth, anyway." _What does that have to do with anything?_ Sheppard lowered the binoculars. "The curvature of the Earth means that out past about three miles, you can't see what's ahead, unless you're on high ground." Victoria stared at him, but Arcade was nodding along with him.

"I read," Sheppard provided by way of explanation. "Anyway, it looked like, structures. Maybe some sort of ruin? Didn't look intact, but it's hard to say."

"Well, Northwest then," Victoria said, looking to everyone. "Unless there's any better ideas?" No one suggested any, so she led the way, everyone else falling in behind. Victoria looked back behind her and gestured at Veronica to walk with her, "come on." Veronica stepped up her pace just a bit so she caught up with Victoria, then matched Victoria's stride.

Victoria had known Veronica for ten months now, just about. She'd gotten very used to her friend-slash-crush's expressions, and this one, the one she'd had since they'd arrived here, was one very thoughtful. Her eyebrows were a little furrowed, but only just, her eyes had a distant sort of cast to them, and she was lightly drumming the fingers of her non-power-fisted hand against her leg.

"Cap for your thoughts?"

"Thinking about this... planet. There's... only place greener than this that I've ever seen would be Vault 22," Veronica started. "If we took Brahmin here, like you said - I mean, they'd have to be on the move, cover a wide range of space as they eat the grass, so we'd want to check this place out in all directions..." then she looked back towards the gate for a moment. "Maybe set up some farms, fertilize with the Brahmin dung. A few houses... the real problem would be getting everyone and everything people would need."

"That did occur to me as well," Victoria nodded. "If we want to really move lots of people and... stuff through the Stargate, sooner or later, we'll need to move the Gate itself. Problem is, we the dialing computer isn't very mobile."

"True," Veronica agreed. "Maybe we could run some sort of cable or something all the way up, but it would be cumbersome." She looked around, letting out a breath, biting her lip a little, a wistful look on her face. "I can't believe we're on another planet - and it looks... well, like what Earth used to look like. I've seen pictures, you know." She gestured a little grandly. "This is... this is what we used to have."

"We can have it again. Someday. Maybe we could wander the galaxy, planet to planet, exploring all the cool alien tech," Victoria suggested, wanting to stop Veronica from getting melancholy. She could guess where this would go. Veronica would wish she could show this to the Brotherhood, get them to understand just how much bigger the world was now.

And of course, she couldn't. The Brotherhood would try to keep the Stargate for themselves, or maybe just bury it, as too dangerous to be allowed to be used.

_The Stargate could be the way to rebuild the whole world. Eventually._ Victoria was always one to think big, but if this could be a way to set up... settlements on other worlds, growing radiation free food, that food, or water from planets with plenty to spare, could be sent through, used to help communities flourish, grow. Rebuild cities. Clear out more ruins, recover lost technology.

And if there was alien tech they could find, useful tech, stuff that could maybe even heal the damage of radiation to the landscape, or... the alien version of radios and telephones, communication over longer distances could be possible. Connecting distant communities... and that was just the start of what she could at least imagine.

_We could use the technology, the access to the Stargate... get all the different independent little communities and peoples across the world, eventually, all work together under one framework, pooling resources... all to use the Stargate..._

Victoria was one to think big, but now, now with the Stargate, she was thinking **huge**. And more than a bit absurdly idealistic. But she couldn't help but imagine.

_Could take a lifetime, or more, but... it could work, couldn't it?_ That was a dream, distant as at might be.

But Cheyenne alone couldn't make full use of the Stargate...

Veronica smiled a bit at the mention of alien technology. "I can't wait to find some," her smile turned into a grin. "Just think what kind of power sources these aliens could use for their... anything? It could make Hoover Dam look like nothing."

"Very true," Victoria hadn't even thought about power generation... but it was a good point. "So... glad I talked you into coming with me?" Not that it had been hard, but still.

_Coward._ Victoria pushed the self-accusation to the back of her head. This was hardly the time or the place.

Veronica laughed, "Of course. Are you kidding me? This is - this is the opportunity of a lifetime. A hundred lifetimes. So many things to learn. I can't wait to study the Stargate itself more. And the dialing computer!" She shook her head, awed. "I've found some impressive old-world computer systems, but that? There's so many layers of complexity there... it took them nearly ten years to make a system that could actually dial the Stargate, even with RobCo's help. And whoever created the Stargates? They can fit it all into that... DHD? I can't even imagine..."

"Smaller computers, better ones too."

"Still... how would we even begin to study one? It could be like... what if ants tried to use a computer?" She laughed, "that's what we must be like, to the Stargate. To what we might find out here."

"Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there?" Victoria grinned. "This really is just the start of a whole new adventure for us." She mimed holding a wineglass. "To a new adventure with my best friend by my side." _More if would just be less fucking oblivious..._ Victoria quashed the errant thought even quicker than her last one. She wasn't _**entitled**_ to Veronica's affections. She didn't get to even **think** like she was.

And again, not the time. _Por dios, Victoria, control yourself._

"New adventure, and best friends," Veronica agreed, miming holding a wineglass as well and 'clinking' her glass against the one Victoria was 'holding'. "Cheers."

**Unknown Planet**

**D Plus 8, Project Blue Book Rediscovery**

The ruins were just that - ruins. Some great stone structure, big, open space, for _something_. There were holes in the roof and the walls, and some of the support columns seemed distinctly unstable. Around the main building where the shattered shells of other, smaller stone structures. And of course, the grass around this whole area was gone, the ground bare and brown, and it had been for a while, but there were also areas of deep impression into the dirt, and they looked almost... fused, in places.

_Like plasma fire._ The impressions reminded her of small impact craters, too, like from the artillery of the Boomers. Just... even smaller than that.

The ruins themselves...

"Is it just me, or does it look like this place was near a nuclear detonation? Like, not too close, but the way these buildings are half-wrecked... it's like parts of outer Vegas, or parts of the Boneyard." Victoria looked around.

"Now that you mention it..." Arcade agreed. "But your Pipboy would be telling us if there was any radiation... and there's no signs of any bombs dropping anywhere nearby."

"What about this?" She gestured to one of the craters. "This dirt here almost seems... _glassy_?" She frowned. "Plasma?"

"Plasma can do that, if it's in powerful enough concentration all at once. Lasers too, but less common." Veronica said. She looked around further. "Scorch marks, small holes burnt in, here on the walls..." she frowned, "This one looks like it came down from above..." she traced the 'line' from the scorchmark to one of the holes in the roof.

"Like there was an attack from the air. Like... a Vertibird with plasma weapons, instead of a gatling gun?"

"This place was attacked then." Sheppard frowned. "No sign of whoever did it now, though." He gestured to Wells and Bosworth, and they went off together, heading off to one end of the structure. "No bodies, either."

"Could have happened a long time ago, but you would think skeletons..." Victoria crouched and ran a hand along the ground. A small amount of dust gathered onto her fingers. "Nobody has been here recently." She stood back up. "Let's look around, see if we can figure out who lived her, see if there's anything to find."

"But let's not linger too long here. I had empty abandoned places. Because they usually aren't." After a moment, Victoria removed her .44 from it's holster, though she kept it pointed at the ground. There was nothing... notable, about the building, she realized, as she walked around. Nothing on the walls, nothing on the floor. No ruined furniture, no bodies...

It was as if someone has stripped the place clean. Which they could very well have...

_Though why? What was here?_

"Victoria, look at this," she heard Veronica say, and Victoria headed over to where the former Brotherhood Scribe stood by a pillar.

A pillar that had some sort of panel, complete with blinking lights and buttons. Veronica held up some sort of fake cover that had been the same color as the stone of the column. The buttons had symbols on them, or maybe they were letters or words in some alien language. It was impossible to say.

"Hidden panel... no way to know what they do..." Victoria considered just pressing one, but that was not the best of ideas. Not while everyone else was in the building any-

Victoria's thoughts were interrupted by sort of high-pitched electronic humming. Raising her gun, Victoria turned, seeing Veronica do the same out of the corner of her eye -

Not five feet from the two of them... a series of five rings floated in the air, bright light inside the cylinder of space they created -

And then the rings sank back into the ground and the light faded, revealing two... humans.

_Armed_ humans.

They were clad in armor, metal, but nothing like the metal armor one could find in the Wasteland, made from scrap beaten together into something resembling a shape. No, this armor was professionally made, covering the body neck to mid-thigh, a collar, a sort of skirt-like bit at the bottom to cover the legs.

In their hands were long metal staves, bulbous heads at one end. With an electric crackling sound, the heads seperated a bit, electricity crackling around it, like the energy that was barely contained inside a Tesla cannon. On their foreheads was a small black tattoo, a symbol of some sort of bird of prey

"Kree tal shal mak!" One of them barked, the words hostile, angry, demanding.

Victoria leveled her gun at one of them, right at his head. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sheppard and Arcade doing the same with their own weapons, Veronica bracing herself to charge with her power fist.

_The rings must be some sort of teleporter..._

"I don't understand you," Victoria said, in a level, even tone. _The Stargate is supposed to translate most languages... that's what the files said. English included. But not this language..._

"Drop your weapons and surrender! Identify yourself!" Even expecting translation, hearing English from an - alien? Alien Human? - was a surprise.

"And who the hell would I be surrendering to?" Victoria replied cooly, cocking the hammer back on her pistol.

"Your primitive weapons are no danger to the Jaffa of the god Heru'ur!" The same one snarled, sounding like a Legionary praising Caesar. "Surrender or die!" Both 'Jaffa' aimed their - staves? - at her.

"I really don't do well with ultimatums like that," Victoria said quietly. "Look, we're not here to fight-"

"You intrude on the territory of the Great god Heru'ur, Son of Ra, Rightful Master of the System Lords!" The Jaffa - whatever that actually meant - barked, "Conqueror of a Thousand Worlds, master of a Hundred Armies!"

"And in possession of a foot-long dick too, right?" Victoria chuckled skeptically. "Or is he gonna claim thirteen inches, really go for that extra inch?" Before the Jaffa could respond, Victoria fired, VATS allowing her aim to be true, the bullet traveling right into the man's head.

Victoria shifted her gun, firing again at the same time Sheppard and Arcade did.

Unfortunately, that split second was all that the other Jaffa needed to fire.

A ball of plasma, bigger and hotter than anything she'd seen thrown at her by the stuff the Van Graffs sold smashed into her chest, the force of the impact sending her flying backwards - she didn't even realize she was moving as the heat burned her, a scream ripping from her throat, until she felt her back smash into the wall, more pain erupting there.

But the other Jaffa was dead even before his shot had connected with her.

"Fuck!" Victoria strangled out, the pain worse than anything she'd felt in a long time. Not as bad as waking up after getting shot in the head, or how she'd been after she'd taken on Fortification Hill single-handedly, but immense nonetheless. She could barely focus but for the agony, but she managed to, only moving her empty arm, to get open a pouch, a new-model stimpack...

She jammed it into her neck, crying out again, but only for a moment as the entry-point painkillers, not as powerful or as long-lasting as Med-X. The potent mixture of Xander Root and Broc Flower, mimicking imperfectly the advanced stimulants made before the war of real Stimpacks moved quickly through her bloodstream, but the pain was going to be with her for a while.

She looked up to see Veronica and Arcade crouched by her side, Arcade starting to pull out a syringe-

"No, no Med-X," Victoria gasped out. "GAH!" She looked down at her armor - it was still mostly intact, but she could see a few bits burnt nearly through by the blast. The advanced pre-war polymers and flexible alloy underlays might have stopped the worst of it, but the heat and impact were still very real, so much more intense than anything a plasma weapon could do. At least any she'd had the misfortune to be hit by.

"Victoria listen to yourself-" Arcade started, but Veronica interrupted.

"What you thinking! You had to know you couldn't get them both!" Veronica's scolding was underlay with concern and fear, the anger only a small note.

"I was thinking," Victoria clenched her teeth as she spoke, the stimulants working at repairing the superficial damage of the burns that had to have gotten through the armor, the same for what had to be ungodly bruising in her back - didn't feel like any bones were broken there, or she'd be completely paralyzed.

It would take hours and more stimpacks to heal all the damage, but this could get her moving.

"I was thinking," Victoria repeated, gritted teeth and the occasional gasp still marking her pain, "that we couldn't let them shoot first. That they were clearly hostile - they talked like Legionaries. You don't negotiate. I have the best armor of anyone here - and it still didn't stop the blast enough. Though I'd braced myself properly it wouldn't have sent me flying ten feet..." Well, it looked like ten feet, give or take.

"Victoria, you can't just _shoot_ random aliens! We invaded their territory!" Arcade scolded, still holding the Med-X. "You might have just started a war we didn't need to-"

"Put that Med-X away!" Victoria snapped, nearly shouting the words. "Sorry," She gasped out a moment later. She looked from Arcade to Veronica, "They said 'surrender or die!' they didn't tell us to leave, they didn't give us any other options and these Goa'uld - this Heru'ur has to be one of them - enslaved humans from Earth."

"I survived ten years as a Courier in the Wasteland because I know when to shoot first. This was one of those times. Like I said - I have the best armor..." She looked down at it again, "And it did a good enough job... I'm alive... and it's still mostly undamaged. Mostly."

"Next time -" Veronica started, then. "Warn us next time, Victoria." The former scribe looked away, biting her lip.

_Shit._

"I'm sorry. You're right. I should have said something. Or we should have discussed... hostile contact plans or whatever." She held out her hand to Veronica, "Help me up?"

With Veronica's help, she managed to get back onto her feet - the pain was still there, but she could walk, and by now the superficial damage, the surface burn would be gone. Getting the real damage healed would take more time - an old-world stimpack might have been able to do more faster, but the mutated flowers and roots that went into the new blend couldn't stimulate the body's natural healing anywhere near as fast or as effectively.

Sheppard and his men were already at work, stripping the bodies of the two Jaffa of their weapons and any pouches. Then, out of one of the bodies sprang some sort of _snake_, almost flying towards Wells - the soldier staggered back, shooting at it repeatedly, tripping falling - and the snake missed him, barely, landing on the ground.

Only to get stepped on by Sheppard.

"What the fuck?!" Sheppard scuffed his foot, making sure to grind thing into the stone.

Victoria eyed the bodies, and then another snake-like-thing slipped out from the armor of the other - it didn't try to... 'leap' or whatever the fuck the other had done, but Sheppard took no chances, firiting a full burst into the foot-long, thin body.

"Okay, so what was that?" Sheppard looked at the two dead...

Aliens.

"Alien life, clearly," Arcade said, walking briskly to the dead Jaffa. He pulled aside the armor of one of the bodies - it had some sort of easy to remove top layer - baring the stomach of the dead human.

But humans didn't have a pouch in their stomachs. Arcade put on a glove and reached into the pouch.

"It's... it's like a pouch for some sort of marsupial," Arcade muttered to himself, "But for... whatever those are."

"Marsupial?"

"Pre-war type of animal," Arcade answered victoria. "Most common in Australia, but in other parts of the world too. I don't know of any that survived the radiation, but they gave birth to life young, but then carried them in an external pouch until they were old enough and developed enough to operate independently. Kangaroos, Opossums, Koalas..." none of the names meant a think to Victoria, but she believed him.

"So what... this... 'Jaffa' was an _incubator?_"

"I have no clue," Arcade admitted. "Not without more time to study these remains, and maybe a live version, if we can manage it somehow-"

Before Anyone could say anything else, there was a loud, almost screeching whine coming from somewhere nearby.

And above.

Through one of the holes in the ceiling, Victoria looked up and saw some sort of... _plane_ swooping down - no, three of them. On a direct line for...

"MOVE!" Victoria moved with the rest as large blasts of what had to be plasma crashed into the ceiling, sending pieces of it falling, one landing where Veronica had been standing fiddling with one of the staff-weapon-things.

The alien planes kept flying by, the blasts having burned deep into the floor, leaving noticeable craters.

"Okay, let's see if we can't get somewhere where those things aren't coming at us." Sheppard suggested.

"Where!?" Victoria demanded. "You can't outrun something that can _fly_!"

"How about wherever those teleporting rings go?" Sheppard suggested. "Waiting around isn't getting us anywhere, and-"

Victoria held up a hand, the whine of the planes getting louder again, as if they were going to come around for another pass -

And then there was another sound, like the rings had made, but this time, outside of the building...

"I think we're about to have company! Take cover!" Victoria dove behind a pillar, everyone else managing to get behind some kind of cover when a dozen armored people quickly entered the structure. More Jaffa, based on the armor...

But the three in the head had elaborate helmets that looked like the heads of like... cobras, if she was remembering the pictures she'd seen in that pre-war magazine. Somehow, she didn't think they were on the same team as the dudes with bird tattoos.

Before she could say anything to test that theory, or even shoot the new arrivals, the rings inside the building activated again, this time filling with four Jaffa - and immediately the new arrivals and the snake group started to fire at one another, the plasma blasts from their staffs wildly inaccurate as they started to crash into the walls all around them. Only the cover they'd taken was keeping them alive.

"I think we've walked right into the middle of a goddamned war!" Victoria shouted, taking aim at one of the - Heru'ur? - Jaffa and shooting at his leg, the thinner armor there not enough to stop her bullet. Arcade, Sheppard, Wells and Bosworth did the same, all targeting and quickly taking down Heru'ur's guys

But the Serpent-team didn't seem to like the assist - with their first enemy down, they started to shoot at Sheppard and his people, each of them only barely managing to get back into full coverage before the staff-weapons hit them with more plasma bursts

The roar of the exploding blasts of plasma all around, as the rings brought up four more of Heru'ur's soldiers - they all quickly dove away from the rings, and then the rings brought up still more... _how many do they have?!_

As if to punctuate her question, more Jaffa came in through the front door, also firing at Heru'ur's men. And at her team. They seemed completely indiscriminate

"They're both hostile, clearly! Kill them all!" Victoria barked. She stood, back pressed against the pillar, it barely covering her body. She spun out the chambers for her pistol and loaded three more bullets to replace the three she'd fired.

"VERONICA, CATCH!" She pulled out her police pistol from the Sierra Madre, dropping it to the ground and kicking near to where Veronica had taken cover. She had no ranged weapon...

Curling a bit around the cover, Victoria turned, took aim and started shooting, emptying her pistol within seconds, dropping down to a crouch behind the pillar, and reloading, not even sure what she'd hit or taken out in the chaotic firefight in front of her.

_Note to self, bring bigger capacity guns next time!_


	5. Wars of the Gods

**Disclaimer:** I don't own either the Stargate series or the Fallout series. Probably for the best for both that I don't, really.

Combat scenes are not and have never been my thing. I tried to make this one better, but as it usually turns out when I try that, it just left me stalled on the chapter. So I just breezed through most of the details.

In general, I was stalled a lot on this chapter, then went and got distracted by other things. I'm back to this now and plan to stay back (while not totally abandoning other writing projects). I was planning to have them be done with this planet during this chapter, but then plans changed.

Lots of talking, not a lot of action, but a lot of important talking.

Wasteland Gate

By Kylia

Chapter 5: Wars of the Gods

**Unknown Planet  
D Plus 8, Project Blue Book Rediscovery**

To be honest, Victoria wasn't even sure how much the six of them - Her, Sheppard, Veronica, Arcade and the other two - were adding to the ongoing firefight. The attackers with the snake hats and tattoos and the defenders with the bird tattoos were doing most of that themselves, and with the humans involved hiding behind cover and taking potshots at the Jaffa only occasionally, most of the casualties had been from the two sides.

It was only when the tide of reinforcements from wherever the teleport rings died down that she started getting serious about shooting the Jaffa again, using the pillar to good effect, but still only shooting one Jaffa at a time, VATS delivering two shoots - one ot the head, one to the chest - to make sure each went down.

And it tended to work. She knew her body was going to be sore beyond belief tomorrow, with how much she was relying on the machine-assisted aiming of VATS and the toll it took on her, but she didn't have the time or the opportunity for freer-handed shooting.

By contrast, Sheppard and the other two members of the CDV were able to lay down much greater fire, their automatic bursts burning through ammo but doing a much better job getting the Jaffa - who seemed to have no notion of taking cover - to keep their heads down. And Arcade's laser was doing a good job punching through the armor of the Jaffa.

_Okay, fuck this, I'm sick of staying here behind cover._ Victoria was not really one for explosives, but she did know how to throw a grenade here and there, and for desperate situations, she always made a point to carry a couple. This counted as one of those desperate situations. She pulled the grenade out, peered out of cover and pulled the pin:

"Grenade!" She shouted, even as she tossed it, and as it landed at the feet of the leading Jaffa, they too dove for cover - but that was good enough, because it meant they weren't firing. Stepping back out from behind the piller, Victoria filed six shots in quick succession, two on three targets, moving forward, diving behind another pillar, and reloading.

"Fire in the hole!" Sheppard shouted - and then she saw him throw another grenade at the Jaffa who were starting to pick themselves back up - and then they were down again, Sheppard and his buddies firing full bursts, the sound of their bullets crashing into the armor a steady plinking noise underneath all the other blasts. Turning around, she dove back into the cover provided by the pillar, and looked back onto the battlefield.

Except that the battle seemed to be done. At least for the moment. No more Jaffa were coming up from the rings, and all the Serpent-helmet ones seemed to be down for the count.

Victoria took a breath, reloading her gun quickly, and then stepped back out of cover. "Everyone else, stay covered, watch my back. Let's see if we can make sure if these guys are all dead." She didn't want to have to deal with any suicide bombers ready to blow her up before they died of their wounds or people playing dead. She'd had to deal with both before, and neither were fun.

She kicked the bodies of the bird-tattoo ones, not wanting to get close in case more of the snake-things jumped out - and sure enough, moments after she started kicking, she had to deal with one slipping out from the pouch on the dead Jaffa and slither across the floor, away -

Victoria shot it, not needing VATS this time. The thing was dead with the one bullet, at least.

"Here's a thought - bring flamers, or at least Shishkabobs, next time. Burn the bodies, keep these things from getting away." The rest of the snake-things for the moment seemed content to stay in the pouches, so she quickly crouched down and grabbed one of the staff weapons, finding the catch to open the bulbous head quickly.

"Doesn't look a thing like any Plasma weapon I've ever seen. No place to put more microfusion cells, seems... simple. Elegant." She looked over to Veronica, "Catch," she tossed it over to the former Brotherhood Scribe, who caught it and started looking it over.

A quick storm of bullets behind her saw her turn around and there was another dead snake-thing.

"_Madre de dios!_ Warn a girl next time, Sheppard!" Victoria demanded, and the man shrugged.

"Sorry," he didn't sound very apologetic. Victoria inhaled sharply and rolled her eyes, before returning to checking the bodies. She shot two more of the snake-things, and then she reached the serpent-head helmet guys. They'd taken the brunt of the grenade blasts, and yet, as she kicked each of the bodies in turn, one of the bodies actually moved, grabbing onto her leg as it rolled onto its side, trying to pull her to the ground with strength that Victoria hadn't faced in anything the size of a human. But with agility born of great practice, she managed to stay on her feel and kick out at the Jaffa's chest and broke free of his grip.

"Seems like this one is alive," Victoria said quickly, darting backwards and aiming her gun at him. She saw Sheppard and his men point their guns at him, but Victoria held up a hand. "Let's see if we can take him alive. His armor is a wreck, he has to be on his last legs."

The Jaffa struggled up into a sitting position, one hand still on his staff-weapon. But after a moment, he dropped the weapon, and his helmet opened, sliding open as the front collapsed forward, revealing a dark-skinned face with a snake-tattoo on his face, only it was in gold rather than ink.

He was handsome enough, but it was the face of a warrior, rugged and showing a man who had killed many times in his life and expected to kill more. A veteran soldier, not some raw recruit or recent conscript.

_What the hell? Did they cut his head and pour molten gold in there?_

"Humans, you have my surrender," the Jaffa said, speaking loudly, his expression a pained one as he struggled against the ruin the attacks must have made of his body.

"Seriously? You're just going to surrender like that? It looked like you guys were all fight-to-the-death," Victoria gestured to the dead bodies of both sides. "Just like that, you surrender to us?"

"The Jaffa of Heru'ur still follow their false god. As do all too many of the Jaffa of Apophis," he gestured to his own fallen comrades. "I do not."

"Seemed like you were just now, when you and your boys took shots at me and my people," Victoria pointed out. "So... Apophis is another Goa'uld? The one you work for?"

"The one who I swore to serve, in the time before I came to realize that the Goa'uld's profession to be gods was false." The man corrected, his voice grim. He tried to stand, slowly, but grunted in pain and fell back to his knees before he could pull it off. "There are only a few who reject the divinity of the Goa'uld, and none that I took with me to this planet to take it from Heru'ur's forces."

"Seems awfully convenient for you," Sheppard pointed out. "That all the guys who might have kiled you if you turned on this Apophis are dead, but you're alive to surrender to us." He sounded skeptical, but then, so was Victoria. Still, she had wanted a prisoner. If they were stepping into a galaxy they did not know, it would do to have some idea of what the fuck was going on. Current events.

"I'm in a great deal of pain, and I could very well die before my symbiote heals me." The man countered flatly. "And it is entirely possible you will kill me. But at least I will die free, and with my killers knowing I die free."

_Free? _She could hear the fervency in his voice as he said 'I will die free', and it reminded her of former Legion slaves, even former Legionaries - all too many made poor prisoners of war, after Second Hoover Damn, but some, for all that they had been broken to the will of Caesar had managed to retain some small spark of freedom that had been renewed with Lanius's death.

"So... these Goa'uld enslave you as well as command you?"

"All are slaves to the Goa'uld, or so they would claim," the Jaffa said. "I would as a question of you, if you would answer it." He grunted in pain again as he tried to stand once more - Victoria and everyone else all kept their guns pointed at him, but this time he did manage to stand, hand pressing on the blood wounds on his chest, though at least they didn't seem to be bleeding as much as they should.

_So the things in their stomachs' makes them heal faster?_ That's what it sounded like, from what he'd said, what she was seeing now.

"Go ahead and ask. I won't promise you an answer." She was hesitant about taking anyone that was carrying around a weird parasite-thing back with them to Earth. Healing or not, it would have to go, but either way, any information was information. And you could learn a lot from the questions someone asked.

"You carry the weapons of the Phantom Godkillers, but you do not bear their armor. You do not fight as they, and you allowed my surrender, rather than killing me out of hand as they do. But none else in the galaxy wield a weapon like that one does." He gestured to Arcade and his energy pistol.

"Phantom Godkillers?" Victoria said, furrowing her brow._ The people who went to Abydos after the bombs dropped! They're still alive!_

Well, their descendents, anyway. They could be like the Enclave - but... not evil. Hopefully. Perhaps they had continued to develop new technology.

She'd seen Enclave Power Armor in action at Second Hoover Dam, when Arcade's parents' old Enclave buddies joined the fight. It was orders of magnitude above even the T-51 Power Armor. Designed after the war, on the Enclave's oil rig...

If these Air Force Personnel had gone to Abydos, and stayed alive, it was possible that they might have done something similar, improving on the technology of 2077 in some ways. And it seemed they were continuing the fight against the Goa'uld.

_Phantom must imply they come and they go with ease... hit and run attacks?_

"Their armor... does it look anything like this?" Sheppard asked, pulling a photograph out of his pocket. Still mostly facing the Jaffa, Victoria walked backwards and accepted the photograph of T-45 Armor. She couldn't tell if it was well-preserved pre-war or taken with a surviving Camera, but it didn't really matter. She walked back towards the Jaffa and half-tossed/half-dropped the photo on the ground. It sort of drift/floated most of the distance towards him between the two of them, and he crouched, managing to keep from making any audible noises of pain as he picked the photo up and examined it.

"Yes. Much like this, though some things appear to be different."

_Well, that confirms that then._

"We have their weapons because we come from the same world as they once did - their ancestors, anyway. Our people... lost contact with them, two hundred of our years ago. It is good to know they yet live." Victoria said carefully, not elaborating in the how of all that. No need to let the Jaffa know how weak Earth actually was, all said and done.

_Yeah, we aren't using the armor because we blew ourselves up and can't make more and have to carefully husband the suits we have left._

"Why do you call them the Phantom Godkillers?" Victoria asked, but she could guess.

"Because they strike without warning, kill all Jaffa they can find and any Goa'uld. They steal all weapons, all Naquadah and other useful materials and take them with them, and leave no trace but death in their wake. They take their dead with them, and have destroyed themselves rather than be captured if need be, or so say the stories." The Jaffa spoke as if he was - and he was, likely, if the 'kill everyone' thing was more or less true - relaying folklore or myth and legend rather than recounting facts he knew well. "Only the scattered reports of survivors who hid, or slaves who did not fight, speak to the truth of their actions. Many years ago, one was killed by a direct blast from an Al-Kesh. Their helmet and their weapon, a larger weapon than the one he wields," once more a gesture towards Arcade, "were recovered mostly intact. Apophis holds them as trophies, though none of his master sorcerers have been able to replicate the magic of either."

_Sorcerers? _Victoria bit back the urge to scoff. So not only did these Goa'uld claim to be gods, but they professed that their technology was magic. The 'master sorcerers' must be the scientists or technicians or something like that.

"There's no such thing as magic," Veronica cut in. "It's just technology. Anyone who pretends a laser rifle is magic is a cheap huckster."

"Well, that's not really the point," Arcade shook his head. He stepped forward, standing by Victoria. He looked over to Victoria, murmuring a question, "do you think a stimpack would work on him?"

"That's a good question," Victoria murmured. "He looks like he's mostly human, but between the pouch and the strength and supposed faster healing... though maybe that comes from the Symbiote thing..." She raised her voice and looked back at the Jaffa.

"What's your name, anyway?" She asked.

"I am Teal'c, of Chulak," the Jaffa said.

"Teal'c," she tested the name. "Say we bring you back with us, as a prisoner. What's to keep that... parasite in you from leaving, trying to infect one of us?"

"My symbiote is young, a larval form of the gods. They take many years to mature, and they do not leave before then unless they have no choice." Teal'c replied stoically.

"A big gamble for us to take on believing you," Victoria said. "If we take you back with us, we're taking it out."

Teal'c shook his head, shifting his back leg a little, into a defensive stance. "Jaffa were created as the incubators of the gods, slaves and soldiers to their will - we require the Goa'uld to survive. Remove my symbiote and I would take ill and die in days. They are a boon to our skill as warriors, our longevity as slaves, but they are the curse that chains my people."

_Shit._ Talk about an assurance of loyalty. If a Jaffa ever started getting a little disloyal, or even just not as ass-kissing as some 'A God Am I' bastard wanted, no more larva inside to keep him or her going. _Clever. If evil._ Addiction, but... worse, really.

This all assumed the Jaffa was truthful, but looking at him, Victoria didn't think Teal'c was lying - there didn't seem to be any tells, anyway. Of course, he was also an alien, so who the hell knew what their tells would be. Then again, he still looked really human.

_There's still the fact that he said it was possible he could die before he healed his injuries, symbiote or not._

"Jaffa are made from humans, no?" Victoria asked. _Created. So... like Super Mutants? But... not green crazy fuckers?_ Okay, that wasn't fair. Not every Super Mutant was crazy. _Though a lot of them are. Even some of the friendly ones._ "So would medicine that works on humans work on you?"

"It does," Teal'c said after a moment.

"Good." She pulled another new-model stimpack out of a belt pouch and tossed it to Teal'c, who caught it easily. "Inject it into your bloodstream through your neck. It'll hurt going in, but it'll help with the healing." Teal'c injected it impassively, not even wincing as the needle went into his neck.

"Keep an eye on him for a second," she told Arcade in a low voice. "I'm going to see what Sheppard thinks."

"You're going to accept his surrender, right?" Arcade deamanded. "We can't just kill him when he's unarmed and not fighting."

"That's the idea, but I'm not sure we can just go taking Prisoners into someone else's home without asking first, now can we?" Victoria pointed out. She gestured to Sheppard and they both walked a bit away from everyone else.

"I'm for taking him in." Sheppard said quietly. "I don't think he's lying, and even if he is, I don't like killing people who are unarmed."

"Me neither, if I can help it," Victoria agreed. "On the other hand, he could be some sort of ticking time bomb." She inhaled sharply, "on a third hand - I actually met a guy with one of those, actually," she went on, getting sidetracked for a moment as she thought about that guy she'd met down in the south, near the Glow. Hadn't even been a useful third hand, just growing out of his side like the start of an arm.

"Anyway... we need his intel. We walked right into the middle of a war, and who knows how many more of these 'gods' there are running around? If we want to get any use out of the Stargate, we'll need to know what we're getting in for."

"Pretty much. I say we take him in - Colonel Mitchel will make sure he's treated fair. We even treat raider prisoners well."

"Why would you take raider prisoners?" Victoria shook her head, "Not like you can rehabilitate them back into society."

"Intel, usually, or if they're related to or buddies with raider bosses, for ransom or hostage," Sheppard shrugged. "But you'd be surprised - get them clean and give them something to do, and some become decent people. A little mouthy, but no one's screwed forever."

"Still, we need to know just how much we can trust him." Sheppard added. "What's that Old World saying? Trust, but verify?"

"Well, we're still at the 'trust' stage, but I think that's how it goes. Or something, yeah."

"Point. I have an idea. Unless you want to turn around and head home already."

"Hell no. Still a lot to do."

"Agreed," Victoria dropped her pack onto the ground and crouched, biting her lip a little as her chest, still throbbing a bit from the earlier plasma blast, pained her at the motion. She pulled a long length of rope out of the pack and went back over towards Teal'c.

"Hands on your head," she told him, not stepping closer until he complied, if he complied. She didn't like the idea of going _mano y mano_ with someone as strong as he seemed to be, wounded or not. "We're going down into wherever those ring... things go. You're coming with us - unarmed, hands tied behind your back. You'll probably know more than us what the hell we'll find there."

"Apophis believed it to be a supply depot and listening post." Teal'c supplied. "This world is remote, but lies near several important key links in Apophis's supply lines. Heru'ur has been using it as a base to spy on and attack Apophis."

"So those two are at war?"

"They have been at war since the Death of Ra, with many intermittent and ultimately temporary truces forced on them by the other System Lords. Heru'ur blames Apophis for his father's disappearance and presumed death, and Apophis consisers Heru'ur his chief rival for the title of Supreme System Lord, once held by Ra."

"System Lords?" Victoria stepped closer once Teal'c put his hands on his head.

"The greatest of the Gods. Many thousands of years ago, Ra forced all the other gods under his leadership, and created a council of the mightiest of them to rule the Goa'uld Domain as his almost-equals. His death two centuries ago changed all that." Teal'c narrowed his eyes a little as Victoria moved behind him and grabbed his wrists, tying the rope around them as she moved his arms behind his back, making sure not to put him in too uncomfortable a position.

"Apophis has always maintained that he killed Ra, and yet, if he had, he would have been in a position to act on that death immediately. He did not - he only acted when he was sure, when all the other Systems Lords were sure, that Ra had truly vanished and his throne empty. And the Phantom Godkillers arose a few years after Ra's disappearance. Your people killed Ra, did they not?"

_Well, I'll give him this, he's not an idiot._

"Pretty sure, yeah."

"Then you can understand why I would wish to surrender to you. Long have those Jaffa who sought to be free hoped to face someone who could be a threat to the Goa'uld, who would fight them and could win. None else who oppose the Goa'uld have ever done such damage to the Gods as killing Ra did. It ushered in decades of war, and the system created after that remains unstable... and the few numbers of Jaffa who see the truth has only grown as a result, though from few to only a few more."

"You want to help us free your people." Victoria nodded. She could get behind that.

"Indeed," Teal'c murmured.

"Alright then. Help us out on this, help us figure out things we can't understand that we find down there, and we'll take you back to our world. After that... Colonel Mitchell and Councilman Hammond seem like good, decent men. If you don't jerk us around, you'll be well treated, and given a shot at freedom."

_Or I'll just break him out so I don't get made a liar by someone else being an asshole._

One or the other.

"These are acceptable terms." Teal'c said after a moment's consideration. "If you truly can free my people, I will gladly offer your world my service."

"One thing at a time, big guy." Victoria slapped his shoulder lightly and gestured to everyone. "Let's grab one of these staff-blaster-things each. Take them home, maybe figure out what makes them tick. They pack a bigger punch than any plasma rifle I've ever had the misfortune to be hit with."

It didn't take them long to grab some, Bosworth even grabbed two, and then they all moved to the rings.

"Any way we can all go down, Teal'c?" She asked, looking at the controls written in an alien language.

"Assuming the rings have been primed from recent use and do not require a specific code - which is likely - pressing the upper left button twice and the middle right button three times should active a delay long enough for someone to get to the rings."

"Alright then." Victoria gestured for everyone to stand where the rings had appeared, Teal'c with them, and then she pressed the buttons, quickly moving into place as the high-pitched whining sound was heard and the rings appeared all around them.

_Down we go._


	6. In Over Our Heads

**Disclaimer: **I own zilch

The name 'Tok'Kal' is the name on the wiki for those Goa'uld stun grenades, though it was only used as a name in later material than the shows themselves.

As I've said before, Fight Scenes aren't really my thing - and so I did my best. With the Jaffa's tactics here, let's not forget how stupid the Jaffa can be most of the time in Stargate SG-1, when it comes to charging in and uttterly failing to use tactics. Even the Rebel Jaffa take a while to fight smart.

Once in a while the SGC does run up against Jaffa with some tactical skill, but it isn't particularly common. I will try and bring some of those into the story at some point - but these guys aren't exactly the elite of Heru'ur's forces.

The Wiki says that Goa'uld Hyperdrives go at 32,000 times the speed of light - in theory, that means they can go 32,000 light years in one year. This fits with various observed data - such as Apophis needing a staging area distinct from his main worlds to attack Earth, and the attack happening from the same world regardless of whether or not SG-1 went to Chulak. The implication I take from all that is that Apophis may have been planning to attack Earth as early as the death of Ra, sending his ships to that staging world well in advance of anything else, then he gated onto the ships at the appropriate time.

Wikipedia says the Milky Way is anywhere between 100,000 to 200,000 light years in diameter (or more), depending on what counts as "part of the Milky Way galaxy". I'm going with a lower estimate that sits just above 100,000, give or take, since that fits the needs of the story better, long term. That means it would take a bit more than three years for a Goa'uld ship to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other. Obviously, I'm taking various amounts of artistic license with reality here, but given that Stargate-verse and Fallout-verse both bend the laws of reality into pretzels, I'm in good company, no?

Wasteland Gate

By Kylia

Chapter 6: In Over Our Heads

**Unknown Planet** **D Plus 8, Project Blue Book Rediscovery**

**Underground Heru'ur Base**

The bright light of the rings faded and left the seven of them standing in an empty room. Victoria furrowed her brow and looked around, holstering her pistol as she realized there was no one waiting to attack us.

"Nobody home?" Sheppard asked, looking around. "This is a natural chokepoint..." Victoria nodded in agreement. It had been the only way down, but she'd have expected more of Heru'ur's goons to be waiting for them.

_Caesar and Lanius would have had people waiting here._ And Lanius's tactical instincts were 'throw people at the problem until they all died or the problem went away'

_Okay, now you're just being unfair to the big idiot. He had a __**little**__ more sophistication than that._

"The tide of reinforcements to the surface ended," Teal'c said, looking around as well. The room was plain, the walls unadorned, save for a panel on one wall and a door leading outwards on another. "Any Jaffa that remain will be guarding the central chambers."

"Why not face us here, to stop us from getting in in the first place?" Victoria stepped closer to the door, looking for some sort of opening mechanism - it had no handle - when it slid open, the two pieces sliding apart into the doorframe and presumably the wall - at her approach.

"If control of the rings on the surface has been lost, there is nothing to stop the deployment of explosives via the rings," Teal'c explained. "Or a Tok'kal, in most cases."

"Tok'kal?"

"A grenade-like device that renders any near it unconscious within moments with bright light and sound. All who fall victim to it are temporarily blind for an hour, at minimum," Teal'c explained.

"Neat," Victoria could see all sorts of fun uses of those. There were pre-war stun grenades, but they were never particularly reliable in Victoria's experience. "You wouldn't happen to have any on you, would you?" If these were reliable, and fast...

"I do not. Apophis did not desire any prisoners - he wanted all of Heru'ur's Jaffa here slain as punishment for their attacks on him forces," Teal'c explained. "But there may be some here."

"Point one out if you see one," Victoria said, and she stepped out into the hallway, not seeing any Jaffa waiting for them. The door was nestled into a corner and the Hallway branched off in two directions - straight ahead, and off to the left.

The walls appeared to be made of gold, and they were covered in symbols - at a distance, they seemed as much like shapes and squiggles, but after when she stepped closer, they proved to be more regular, repeating, in patterns that did not seem random. They reminded her of the pictographs of tribals - but they seemed too regularized even for that.

"This writing?" She asked, stepping away and jerking her thumb at the symbols. Teal'c nodded. "What does it say?" _And how hard will it be for me to learn it?_

"Prayers to the Glory of Heru'ur," Teal'c said after a moment, looking over the walls. "Most structures of the Goa'uld are lined with such writings, praising the god that reigns there."

"Charming people, these Goa'uld." Even Caesar hadn't been _quite_ that egotistical.

"More important question - is it real gold?" Sheppard asked. _That is a good question._ Gold was still oddly valuable in the Wasteland, in the right quarters, anyway, as her haul of just three gold bars from the Sierra Madre had proven. _Still wish I could have nabbed them all._

"Unlikely," Teal'c replied. "Were this a palace of a System Lord, it might be, but here, it is more likely to simply appear as gold." Victoria watched Sheppard poke the wall with his knife a few times.

Veronica, who hadn't really been paying attention to any of the conversation just now, looked up from the staff-weapon-thing in her hand, "These weapons - do they ever run out?"

"Eventually, yes, the liquid naquadah runs out, but it takes many years, in most cases," Teal'c explained.

"Naquadah - that's the stuff the Stargate is made out of." Veronica mused.

"It is the heart of most Goa'uld magic - it powers almost all that they use."

"And I assume it's not just something you find lying around anywhere?"

Teal'c shook his head, "Worlds with Naquadah mines are among the most prized territories of any System Lord, and the most prized holdings for any underlord to rule on behalf of their master. When a world runs dry, the goa'uld abandon it, and leave the people behind to fend for themselves."

"So very godly of them," Victoria murmured. "And there really are just a few Jaffa who question their divinity?"

"Jaffa are raised from birth to see the Goa'uld as gods," Teal'c replied. From someone else, the words might have been defensive, but Teal'c's tone was nearly impossible to read, he spoke without much inflection, a lot of the time, though it would be wrong to call it 'robotic'. "And the Goa'uld are skilled manipulators - at a distance. It is only after I served as one of Apophis's personal guard that I started to see firsthand his mortal failings, no matter how he tried to mask them."

After a moment, Victoria nodded. She could see that. It would fit with Caesar - the man had purged many of the earliest of his minions, people who had known him early on, and now ensured few of his followers ever got to see him but at a remove. She'd had his Mark and had been able to see him at will - and then shot him in the head like he'd deserved - but from what she'd overheard walking to his tent, few actually had audiences with Caesar outside his innermost circle - Vulpes Inculta, Lucius, Lanius, a handful of others.

Not that his inner circle hadn't seen him as the Son of Mars, but Caesar, for all his flaws, understood people surprisingly well - and he'd probably deliberately played the 'hide away behind guards and ceremony' card for the very reason that knowing him too well could destroy his carefully constructed facade.

_But not as much as lead in his brain. _Victoria mused again, and she couldn't help but smile a bit. Killing Caesar was _never_ going to get old, as far as she was concerned.

But she only allowed herself to remember the pleasant memory of the sight of the bastard's dead body for a few moments before she shook her head and came back to now.

She looked at her Pip Boy, wondering if it was going to be of any use in mapping this place, but when she pulled up the mapping section of the device, all she got was interference, a fuzzy screen and 'Interference Error' flashing on it for a few moments.

"Fun," Victoria really had been letting herself get too reliant on this thing, especially for navigation. She looked over at Teal'c, "So what exactly where you looking for, when Apophis sent you here? Any high-value targets?"

"Any and all weapons and war making supplies - Apophis always needs more for his armies - as well as intelligence from Heru'ur's systems. We were to retrieve all the storage crystals from the computer systems here and deliver them to him."

"Good places to start," Victoria murmured. If they were going to make any use of this stargate to settle people on fresh worlds, or get resources or just... grow food, then they'd have to fight these Goa'uld, if they really were all over the galaxy as Teal'c seemed to imply. Or at least risk it.

Better to know the enemy. And of course, more supplies were always good. Weapons, tech, any interesting looking raw materials.

"Veronica and I will take point, Teal'c, you're right behind us. Arcade, you're with him." She looked over at Sheppard, "You're okay with watching our backs?"

Sheppard shrugged, "Hey, you want to get shot first, I'm not going to stand in your way." It didn't actually sound as blase as the words seemed - it just seemed to be Sheppard's apparently flippancy at work, based on everything he'd said thus far.

"It also means I get first claim on all the cool shit," Victoria countered, grinning, then she started down the hallway going straight, hoping this place wasn't _too_ large. She didn't want to still be here if Apophis or Heru'ur sent reinforcements and they had to fight their way back to the Stargate. That did not sound fun, not even a little bit.

Veronica walked up beside her, a slight spring in her step that Victoria hadn't seen in a while. She wasn't quite grinning, but there was a hint of one in her eyes. She knew the former Scribe well enough to know when she was pleased, and she was _very_ pleased indeed.

"What's got you so pleased all of a sudden?" Victoria asked quietly as they walked next to each other, eyes mostly forward as they headed down the hallway. It wasn't all that long before another turn to the right - the hallway so far had no doors, which struck her as odd, but she supposed in a pitched fight, a certain amount of 'empty space' was worthwhile, as it gave you ground to give.

"Just thinking about how envious the rest of the Brotherhood would be, if they knew what was to be had here. I mean, think about it? Plasma weapons that don't run out for _years_? Keeping the Brotherhood in energy and microfusion cells is always a chore - scavenging or buying ones from outside, recharging and recycling used ones, making a small trickle or new ones..." she shrugged, "And just - there's so much out here. Spaceships and reliable teleportation and those Tok'kal that Teal'c just mentioned - and _I'm_ going to be the one to get to study it all." She laughed, "The Brotherhood was so afraid I'd share our secrets with outsiders they killed those Followers..." her tone lost her mirth almost as suddenly as it had appeared and she shook her head.

Then she laughed again, this time with a harsh, bitter, angry edge, "Now I don't even _need_ their secrets. Everything the Brotherhood thinks they know is getting tossed out the window - and this time, I can actually use anything I learn to help people out there, in the wasteland."

She looked back at Teal'c for a moment, then added, "Help people out here, in the galaxy, if he's telling the truth. An entire galaxy of slaves..." She shook her head.

"So you vote for taking the fight to these Goa'uld?" Victoria voted that way too. "I mean, Earth isn't really equipped to fight aliens with spaceships that can blow things up from orbit." She had to assume that these Goa'uld could do that. At the very least that presumably could if they got closer.

Veronica shrugged, her tone serious and soft, "The people that fled Cheyenne Mountain could have stayed hidden on one world. Buried the Stargate there like the ancient people who did the first time here on Earth. But instead, they're using their technology and weapons for good, outnumbered and outgunned. I don't see why we shouldn't try to do the same."

"Good point," Victoria hadn't thought of it like that. She'd just understood the practical reality that if these goa'uld were a numerous force in the galaxy, then there was a risk of running into them anywhere they went.

Which left the choices as burying the Stargate again, forgetting it was there... or fighting the Goa'uld. And Victoria was a firm believer in taking the fight to the enemy, and decapitating their leadership.

_The Legion didn't die when I killed Caesar - but when I killed Caesar, Lucius, Vulpes, Lanius and the rest, it shattered._ The same apparently happened with the Goa'uld - Ra was killed, and his 'System Lords' fought amongst themselves and had for the last two hundred years.

_So if we kill Apophis, Heru'ur and all the rest, one by one, then their minions will all fight each other._ It was a lofty goal - she didn't even know where any of them were - but it seemed the best strategy.

"It won't be easy..." Victoria murmured.

"But it will be a hell of a lot of fun?" Veronica guessed her next words with a laugh, and Victoria grinned, putting a hand to her heart dramatically.

"Oh, you know me so well," she looked at the laughing scribe, and realized just how much she missed seeing the other woman smile or laugh - she'd done it but rarely when they'd first met, but she'd almost entirely stopped after her failed attempt to join the Followers.

At least she didn't smile in mirth or enjoyment. She'd had the occasional satisfied smile, like after Second Hoover Dam, or after they'd finally reached Cheyenne and found the Stargate.

"I forgot how... pretty your face gets when you smile,," Victoria said after a moment, then she realized what she said, that she'd said it aloud...

_Shit_.

And she'd said it in a flirtatious tone, not just a casual compliment.

_Double shit._

Fuck fuck fuck. Now was _definitely_ not the time to be ruining their friendship with her crush!

Veronica stared at her for a moment, as if stunned, and then she started to speak quickly, the words coming too fast to really hear, before before she could say more than a few moments, they heard the sound of something rolling across the ground towards them.

Victoria looked down, to the corner they were approaching, and the sight of a small, slightly larger than a grenade black ball rolling towards them.

_Tok'kal._

She heard a small whine start to escape it, but before it could activate, Victoria once more brought up VATS and fired at the device, once, twice, three times, the heavy .44 caliber bullets cracking open the device and damaging it's internal circuitry,. Even still, the whine had gotten more high-pitched in those precious two seconds, and as the aftermath rang in her ears, Victoria felt numb, her whole body stuff and her ears felt like they might just be bleeding.

She doubled over, and she wasn't the only one, as she saw Veronica do the same

_Next time, try kicking it. Or just do the smart thing and cover your ears and close your eyes._

The pain in her arm from yet another use of VATS so close to all the others left her arm throbbing, the numbness from the Tok'kal fading quickly to be replaced by ever nerve feeling like it as on fire. Victoria bit her lip, tasting blood, but she'd had to deal with this before - she could handle it-

Around the corner came three more Jaffa with the bird-tattoos, each one holding some sort of green-gray weapon shaped like one of the snake-parasite things, ready to strike. They fired - Victoria dove, tackling Veronica to the ground and the shot - looking like a bolt of electricity or lightning - going over her head, hitting Arcade - who let out a cry of pain and then dropped to the ground.

Victoria felt her breath catch and her heart pound in her throat at the sight of her friend dropping to the ground - but she couldn't afford to check on him, or worry -or worse - as one of Sheppard's men dropped to the ground as well.

Rolling off of Veronica, Victoria didn't use VATS this time to fire off another three shots from her .44 at one of the Jaffa, rolling again to avoid another electricity blast as she let go of her .44, pulled her police pistol from the Madre, moved it to her dominant hand and squeezed off another two shots, her arm still throbbing furiously, her ears still hurting, but she'd had worse, been through worse, and she had to keep going.

Sheppard and his other soldier were firing as well, though Victoria didn't turn to look at them as she aimed at the last one, who was falling back, trying to get around the corner - Victoria aimed for his leg and fired, but without VATS to guide her -

The aiming took just a second too long and he was around the corner, moving quickly.

Victoria was on her feet, racing after him, turning around the corner, but only long enough to see him run through an open door that closed behind him just ahead and on the left wall.

"_Mierda_," Victoria muttered, pulling up short, the pain in her ears finally starting to fade. She wasn't stupid or reckless enough to chase the Jaffa into the room alone, especially not with -

"Arcade!" She turned back, hurrying to the rest of the group, to see Sheppard crouched by the fallen form of his man and Veronica checking Arcade's pulse/

"He's alive - unconscious," Veronica said, standing back up. Victoria let out a breath, and she turned to Teal'c, raising an eyebrow.

Teal'c nodded, jerking his head towards the two fallen Jaffa and their snake-shaped weapons. "Zat'nik'tels," he named the items, "A less deadly weapon that the staff, with the first shot. It causes severe pain that drives the target into unconsciousness. A second shot in rapid succession will kill most targets."

"How much longer before Bosworth and this guy," sheppard stood as well, gesturing to Arcade, "wake up?"

"The length of time varies," Teal'c said unhelpfully, "Ten to twenty, perhaps, in some cases longer. Much shorter in others." Teal'c looked at the two, "enduring previous hits over many months or years will reduce the effectiveness."

"So you build up an immunity to it?"

"The pain becomes easier to handle," Teal'c clarified for Veronica, "The device truly does not cause unconsciousness - the Goa'uld designed it as an instrument of torture as much as one of capture."

"Charming," Victoria grumbled.

"What might make a second shot not kill?" Veronica asked, curiously. "You said 'most', but not all?"

Teal'c nodded, "I have heard tell of times when a second shot even immediately after the first does not kill. Unas, those wearing certain rare armors - predatory megafauna hunted by the Goa'uld for sport have been known to take more than two shots to kill. Or even more than one to render immobile or unconscious." Teal'c cleared his throat, and Victoria looked him over, wondering if this guy was used to talking this much.

_If he secretly hates his boss and most of his fellow Jaffa don't.. He's probably used to keeping things close to the chest_.

Victoria debated grabbing her canteen and offering it to Teal'c, but after a moment, rethought it. She'd either have to untie his hands - she wasn't ready for that - or just pour it down his throat. Somehow, she got the feeling he wouldn't be interested in such an undignified option just yet.

His comment about predatory megafauna suggested that a Deathclaw might take more than two shots to kill - still, even if it took three or four or five to take one down, it would be a huge improvement over the 'fuck if I know just keep shooting!' it took for one with any weapon she'd ever heard of.

_On the other hand, I don't exactly want to find a deathclaw just to test it out._

She wasn't worried about another attack just yet - these Jaffa seemed to have the tactical instincts of Raiders once they'd been beaten back the first time - attack intermittently and in usually small groups, rather than really swam the enemy or go after them nonstop.

_Can't assume that'll always be the case, though._ She crouched, and carefully, in case the symbiotes inside the fallen Jaffa came out to play, grabbed the two Zat'nik'tels from the dead Jaffa, tossing one to Sheppard and handing the other to Veronica.

"Probably a good idea to have a ranged weapon against these guys, Veronica." The former scribe hesitated for a moment - she really wasn't that good with her aim, though she _could_ hit the broad side of a shed - but then nodded. At least if she missed, friendly fire would be less harmful.

Sheppard caught the one thrown to him and raised an eyebrow. "No loot for you?"

"Major, we've got an entire base filled with bad guys to kill and loot. And hopefully an armory. I think the problem will be carrying it all back, not making sure there's enough for everyone." Chuckling, Sheppard nodded in agreement. "I don't want to stand around waiting here in the hall until Arcade and Bosworth wake up, but we can't leave them behind."

"Not the best place to wait, no," Sheppard agreed, drawing out the last word a bit, obviously wondering where she was going.

"I think You and I should head into that room, clear it out, while Teal'c, Veronica and Wells stay behind to watch Arcade and Bosworth," Victoria suggested. "Clear it, take Arcade and Bosworth in and wait until they recover."

Sheppard considered for a moment, then nodded. "Anymore of those - Tok'kal? - on those two?" Victoria checked the two bodies, then shook her head, "Nope. So I guess we just have to go in." She reloaded her police pistol and her .44, wondering what she was going to do in the future about this. She wasn't terrible with rifles - she was no Boone, or even close, but she wasn't bad with a sniper rifle, and she could use an assortment of others if need be, but the fact remained that she was much better with pistols than anything else.

And none with better stopping power than her .44. She had an emergency holdout gun - a silenced .22 - but she hadn't brought anything else.

Back at the Lucky 38 she had a whole assortment of rare weapons she'd found and not sold, but didn't carry around - a couple .45 auto pistols she'd gotten from Zion, some 12.7mm pistols, and an assortment of rifles and other weapons.

But Victoria had always preferred her revolvers. Which rather threatened to bite her in the ass now - the rate of reload was a little slow for most, though her police pistol took the preset things, making it a bit faster.

_If I ever get back to New Vegas, I'm grabbing all my shit and taking it here._ She had no reason not to, really. She didn't foresee herself moving away from Cheyenne - from the Stargate - any time soon, if she could help it.

_Hell, maybe I'll settle in on some nice little planet somewhere, build a house, have a farm. Retire._

The image only held in her head for a few seconds before shattering under the unyielding weight of reality.

_Yeah right,_ she scoffed mentally as she took a position on one side of the door, Sheppard taking the other side.

_I'll be at this until I get in over my head one too many times and die._ She couldn't imagine herself actually retiring from being a courier - or at least, from being an explorer, constantly searching for new places, always walking the frontier.

Life in a city, or in the relatively safe parts of the Wasteland, like the heartlands of the NCR, just wasn't for her, and she couldn't see herself settling down anywhere to live some peaceful, normal, humdrum daily life, even on the edge of civilization.

"Cover me," Sheppard murmured, and Victoria raised an eyebrow for a moment before nodding. Sheppard moved in closer to the door, letting it open, and Victoria looked around the corner - they opened fire immediately on the four Jaffa within the largish room within. The Room had a small table with a few chairs, a large screen displayed on one wall, filled with more of the characters that had been on the wall - Goa'uld writing.

Two of the Jaffa showed something resembling tactical instincts and took cover behind pillars, but another two just sort of stood there, firing a zat'nik'tel - _probably better to call it a 'Zat' -_ and a staff weapon. But with the cover of the door, Victoria and Sheppard were able to avoid getting hit.

She fired off two shots at a time, every time she tried to get the Jaffa to keep their heads down, but without time to aim and refusing to risk using VATS again right now - not with her arm still throbbing - she wasn't able to more than wing the armor of even the Jaffa just sort of standing around, or get them a grazing shot on the arm or leg. It might actually throw off your average Legionary or Raider or the like, or even take them out of the fight, but it wasn't doing much to these Jaffa.

Which meant she wasn't doing a very good job of giving Sheppard cover, which showed, because it was proving difficult for him to find an opening to get inside the room. After several seconds of making no forward progress, he gestured towards her - _she_ should go in, and he'd cover her. He pulled a fresh clip for his assault carbine from his belt and switched his current one out.

Victoria nodded, lowered her gun, dropped into a crouch and then rolled into the room, a staff and zat blast flying over head, and then she was behind another pillar, with better angles on the Jaffa in the room - unfortunately, the two with tactical sense were able to move as she straighted back up into a crouch. The two idiots though, were still idiots.

The better angle giving her an opening, Victoria took aim and fired - she had gone without VATS for years, and she could actually shoot without again, if she had to...

Firing off all six shots in rapid succession, she aimed for the head and neck of the two idiot Jaffa - she missed with three shots, but to connected with the head of one, blowing the back of his head off in the process, and the other missed her target area and got him in the chest, not getting far, but getting enough in through the armor to make the Jaffa stagger back in pain. Which gave Sheppard a chance to lay down more fire and come in, a hail of bullets hitting the Jaffa, punching through the armor in several places and dropping him, leaving just two more in the room when he joined her behind the pillar.

"Count of three?" Victoria suggested, reloading her .44. She'd have to switch back to the police pistol after this. "I'll take left? You cover mine, I'll cover yours."

"Makes sense to me," Sheppard agreed.

Still crouched, Victoria moved out from behind the pillar's cover, firing off two quick shots to keep the jaffa further from her behind cover, while a spray from Sheppard's carbine kept the one closer to her with his head down. Victoria fired off a third for good measure, then jumped to her feet, grabbing onto another pillar and combining the momentum of pulling on the pillar - and thus herself forward - and the jump to land on the other side from where she'd started, right next to the Jaffa - to his credit, he turned when he saw her, trying to bring the cumbersome staff weapon around to swing at her or shoot her, but not soon enough to stop the bullet smashing into his face, shattering his teeth and flying out the other side of his head. The Jaffa collapsed to the ground, moments after Sheppard's target took a second burst to the chest and dropped.

Breathing heavily, Victoria leaned against the wall, her arm still in pain, adrenaline still pumping through her, but after a few moments, she straightened up and picked up the dropped Staff weapon of the Jaffa she'd just killed.

It took her a few monents to figure out how to shoot it, but once she found the trigger, she fired at the abdomen of the Jaffa in front of her.

"Well, that works too," Sheppard mused. He just went with the expedient of firing a burst into the stomach of the rest, while Victoria picked up a Zat from one of the other fallen Jaffa - one of the idiots.

"Let's get out friends," Sheppard suggested, and Victoria nodded. It was a relatively quick matter for the still unconscious Arcade and Bosworth to be carried into the room, Teal'c following along quietly.

"What does all that say?" Victoria asked, gesturing to the screen.

"Intercepted communications," Teal'c said after a minute to read over the screen. "It would appear that Heru'ur was indeed using this base to spy on Apophis's armies." Which meant there could be all sorts of useful information on there - the tactical stuff, maybe not, but potential places to explore to steal more tech or places to avoid or...

_Anything._

When you were as outgunned as Cheyenne - hell, the entire planet - was looking to be...

Every scrap of information counted.

Victoria started to fiddle with her pipboy, about to pull out the data connection cord, but then...

_Fuck_.

There was no way that her Pipboy would be compatible with this computer.

"You said something about memory crystals?" Victoria asked, looking to Teal'c.

"Indeed."

"And you'd need another Goa'uld computer to read them?"

"Indeed," he confirmed.

"So we're not getting anything out of it that we don't learn now," Victoria grumbled. And since only Teal'c could read Goa'uld writing for the moment...

"Start reading off what it says" She walked behind him and untied the rope. It was a risk, but she trusted the guy enough for that. His disgust for the Goa'uld seemed entirely genuine, and so too did his apparent willingness to help them. "Here," she added, handing him her half-full canteen. He accepted it and took a sip before handing it back to her. Then he started to read off the information. Victoria slipped a holotape into her PipBoy to start recording.

Most of it was contextless, something she had no frame of reference for - mention of supplies or troops being moved from location to location, ships being moved from various planets. During all this, Arcade and Bosworth woke up and were filled in on what had happened.

"It also has a map of the latest changes in the lines of battle, such as they are," Teal'c said after he was done. He tapped at the console underneath the screen and brought up a map of a disc-like shape, with two... bits spiralling out from the middle on the sides.

The right half of the map was a riot of colors - mostly twelve colors and a number of smaller ones.

"The territory of the System Lords in the galaxy and notable lesser Goa'uld." Teal'c explained. He set two of the colors - green and gold - to glow slightly, "These are the territories of Heru'ur and Apophis, respectively." The two territories didn't seem to border each other much at all, and yet, they fought.

And yet, not all the territory was contiguous. Inside the various domains were little 'islands' of other colors, and even though the Goa'uld seemed clustered on the left side of the 'galaxy', there are various islands of color further away.

_Planets owned just through the Stargate?_ That made sense. The Goa'uld had ships, but the Gates meant you could cross vast distances instantly.

"And where are we, in relation to all this?" Victoria asked. She almost asked where Earth was, but rethought it - she didn't trust Teal'c that far, yet. She had already resolved she was going to make sure he didn't see them dial the address to Earth yet either, in case he was hostile and, god forbid, got away through the Stargate anyway.

"Here," he zoomed the galaxy map in close to the gold-colored area - Apophis's domain - and one star system flashed not far from the edges of it. "This world has nothing of interest to Apophis, and so it has been ignored."

'But he knew about it to know that Heru'ur had a base on this world." Victoria mused. "Which makes this pretty useless to us." The world was so... _green_, and really, so much less warm than most parts of the West Coast and the NCR - though it wasn't much cooler than Colorado.

The thought of the _food_ that could be grown here. She was no farmer, so she was sure it was easier said than done, but still. Cheyenne wasn't at any risk of running out of food, and neither was the Refugee Camp at Fort Carson, but food was always in demand. All too many people starved or lived on the edge of starvation...

Plus, it would be a place to send more refugees.

_But this world is too close to Apophis to be of any use._ If they could manage it, they should probably try to stay away from the 'left' side of the galaxy in general. Even if a planet was not actually controlled by the Goa'uld... too much risk.

Most of the time, anyway. If they wanted more staff weapons and Zats and everything else they could steal from the Goa'uld, they'd have to go to planets under their control anyway.

_Maybe figure out the lightly defended worlds, with smaller garrisons. Might not be much with each one, but it adds up._

"Is there any way to know where a planet is just from the address?" Victoria asked, turning back to look at Arcade.

Arcade had already pulled notebook out of his coat and started scribbling something down. Not looking up, he said, "Should be, yeah," Arcade nodded. He looked up at Teal'c, "You wouldn't happen to know?"

"The Goa'uld teach us how to use their devices, not the means by which they work," Teal'c said with a shake of his head. "As I said - knowledge of Goa'uld magic is forbidden."

"Right," Arcade nodded, waving his hand a little, "Sorry, forgot." He looked over at Victoria, "I'm going to repeat that we really should try to shake Dr. Carter loose from the OSI. She is going to have a much easier time with all this than I ever could."

"It's on my to-do list! Talking the NCR into just handing over a top scientist - and maybe a lot more resources and manpower - isn't exactly going to be easy." Victoria protested defensively. Teal'c said nothing, but she could tell from the way he arched one eyebrow that he was curious what they were talking about. "Long story," She waved a hand at Teal'c, "If we take you back home, I'll fill you in myself."

But given the sheer size and scope - the need to get the NCR to send... something. The CDV wasn't that large, and of course, it could only spare so much men for the Stargate - it needed to defend itself from raiders, from the Legion's splinter groups...

And Cheyenne itself was well off, but it could only put so many resources to this project. In time, she hoped it would pay for itself, but still...

_No matter how much we try to avoid confrontation, we're stepping into a galaxy at war. _

The NCR was the proverbial 'Big Kid On The Block', and with the Legion gone, there was no one to threaten them. Sure, Kimball would be demobilizing a lot of the Army now that they'd taken the Mojave, but still.

_Arrange an equal split of the tech and resources and... everything else. Cheyenne hosts the Gate - possession is 9/10s of the law, and the NCR is in no position to steal it across this distance..._

And the NCR could provide manpower, resources.

Victoria was pretty sure she had enough credit with the NCR that if she showed them some proof, and made a good case... she might just be able to pull it off.

_Of course, even with the NCR's help, we'll be in over hour heads so far we'll never claw our way back to daylight._

"I can't think of anything that would annoy the most conservative factions of the Brotherhood more than the NCR getting their hands on some of this stuff," Veronica said, with a chuckle that was both genuine and bitter. "Or any of the others, really." She didn't sound entirely comfortable with the idea either, but that didn't surprise Victoria - Arcade didn't look thrilled either, once Veronica mentioned it.

Both of them had good reason to look in askance a bit at the NCR. But for Victoria...

It was still home. Still her country. As Cass had said - the NCR might be the dumbass little brother, the family fuckup, but it was family. _And I think they have every chance to get better, now that the Legion is gone and they have electricity and water from Hoover Dam..._

"One thing at a time," Sheppard said. He looked at the map, "Just how many planets to the Goa'uld have?"

"Many hundreds, perhaps more." Teal'c said. "The number varies - worlds abandoned, worlds reclaimed. If a world has no use to the Goa'uld - no resources, no large mass of slaves, no strategic position - then it will be most likely abandoned without ceremony in due time."

"How long would it take a Goa'uld ship to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other?" Victoria mused. "Days? Weeks? Months?"

"Several years - at least three," Teal'c said after a moment's thought.

_Hopefully Earth is far enough away that we won't be worth sending ships to. _

"Good to know," Sheppard seemed to be picking up on the same thoughts as her, hopefully. "We should get on with clearing out the rest of this base, then we can come back here and take all the intel we can."

Clearing the rest of the base proved to fairly quick - there weren't that many more chambers. Various living spaces - spartan bunks, mostly - for the Jaffa, as well as a more ornate chamber that Teal'c said would be the place for a visiting underlord - subordinate Goa'uld of high rank - sent from Heru'ur might reside. They did have to fight another half-dozen of Heru'ur's Jaffa, but

During the fighting, Teal'c had, as far as Victoria was concerned,proved they could trust him. Because more of Apophis's Jaffa had arrived on the surface and entered the base while they explored it, and Teal'c proved entirely willing to trick several into letting their guard down, and even punching two in the face in the process. Sheppard seemed to agree with her - she had to admit a lot of it was gut instinct, but still.

And, most valuably, they found an armory - it wasn't massive, nor the best stocked, but it contained dozens more staff weapons - Ma'Tok was the proper name for one, apparently, - Zats and Tok'Kals. They also found the Jaffa equivalent of MREs, and an assortment of minor technological toys - communication devices that worked over great range, albeit only as far as orbit to a device paired to the same frequency, a torture device known as a 'Rod of Anguish' that Victoria left behind, and a few other odds and ends.

They couldn't carry all the Staff weapons, but they did manage to get a good number of them, and stuffing the Zat's into their packs had been easier. Teal'c did show them how to remove the liquid naquadah cores from the Staff weapons, which let them take those as well, for experimenting with plasma weapons back home.

Finally, though, weighed down with loot and ready to go, they returned to the surface. Fortunately, it was only one more firefight against a few lingering "Serpent Guard" as they were called later that finally allowed them to make the trek back to the Stargate, and back to Earth. As she'd planned, she had Teal'c look away, and used her PipBoy radio to send a signal through to Cheyenne Mountain, to tell them they were coming back.

She had a pack full of loot and a head full of plans.

_Starting today, the Wasteland is going to change for good._ The Stargate would change **everything**, in a way almost nothing else had before it. Not since the Bombs, anyway - and really, in some ways, the Stargate was almost - _almost_ \- bigger than nuclear annhilation.

And Victoria Fernandez would get to be there, right front and center. Pushing the edge of what was known, seeing all there was to see out there in the wider galaxy.

_I can't wait to see what happens next._


	7. Captain Carter, I Presume

**Disclaimer:** Still don't own it.

I don't know if any of you were specifically looking forward to the scene where Victoria meets President Kimball and tells him all about the Stargate/convinces him it's real/etc.

I decided against writing that scene because, frankly, Aaron Kimball is not likely to show up much, if at all, in this story, and because we get so little of a handle on him and his actual personality in the game that I'd have nothing to work with.

'Cobarde' is apparently Spanish for coward, from what I can tell.

I looked all through my notes on this story, as well as everywhere I discussed it, and I can't find anywhere where I confirmed how long from the start of the game it took for the Second Battle of Hoover Dam to happen - just that the story started six months after the battle. As you'll see below, I finally settled on a date, which suggests that the events of New Vegas took place over the course of about 5 and change months, which, given the small area covered, is not all that unreasonable. There is logically only so long the battle would have been realistically delayed by the Legion, after all, and when the game starts, the battle is on the verge of happening.

It's been a long time since I've written any SG-1 characters. As always, let me know if you think the characterization is off, though the circumstances for them are are different, and we're only just now introducing them so we'll see them in more familiar contexts that will give me a better chance to display them IC.

Wasteland Gate

By Kylia

Chapter 7: Captain Carter, I Presume

**Sublevel 23, Cheyenne Mountain**

**Victoria Fernandez's Quarters**

**D Plus 11, Project Blue Book Rediscovery**

"Wait, so... they _actually_ agreed to it?" Veronica didn't sound like she could believe it, though Victoria couldn't really seem why. This had been an obvious outcome, sooner or later. Hammond wasn't an idiot, and the Cheyenne Council obviously enormously respected the man - well, not counting that ass Kinsey.

_Makes me think of Benny... but with even less charisma._

"Well, it was pretty close," Victoria admitted after brief reflection, realizing that perhaps Veronica had a point in her surprise. "The final vote might have been 5-2, but I'm pretty sure Hammond called in some favors, if I was following what he told those two people wavering to get them to change their votes. But they agreed - they'll let me talk to the NCR, and get them to send over scientists, Rangers, soldiers and resources, in exchange for an equal share of the take from the Stargate - trade, loot, salvage, whatever."

It was the most practical solution, and the distances involved would ensure that the NCR, even if they ever wanted to make a play for sole ownership of the Gate, would have no real chance at doing so for **at least** a decade, probably more.

_By the time the NCR is ready to expand this far west, the post-Legion chaos will probably have stabilized. Either a bunch of mini-:Legions, or more likely a mix of Legion-inspired warlord fiefdoms and other random statelets._

Small though they might be, they'd be numerous, and well-militarized from constantly fighting each other. It wouldn't be an easy go for the NCR to just take them over by force. Which would delay any bid for sole control of the Stargate even more.

And the benefits...

"Ultimately though, especially after I had Teal'c explain just how in over our heads we are, they saw the merit in getting more manpower and resources here." The former Jaffa was still being carefully watched by the CDV - Victoria was content that he was a genuine defector, but it was asking a lot to expect people to believe it. "You and Arcade will keep an eye on him? Make sure they treat him-"

"I already said I would, Victoria," Veronica interrupted, smiling a little. "You're really concerned about him."

"I promised he'd get a fair shake here. And he will. Though I'm not sure how safe it is for him to go onto the surface," she added, musing. "I mean, he's got that snake in his stomach, but..." she shook her head. "Would it be safe?"

"How safe is it for a vault resident to come onto the surface for the first time?" Veronica pointed out. "Any harm will take years, at least, as long as he takes the occasional dose of radaway as needed, and avoids the seriously irradiated zones, and his symbiote will probably protect him from some of the effects of rads anyway."

"True..." Victoria granted. "Still think he should take it carefully. Which is one of the arguments against moving the Stargate to the surface." The impracticality of moving large numbers of men and material through the elevator - and the handful of ladder-based escape tunnels that they'd found and opened up - had made Victoria propose to Hammond, during the post-mission debrief, that they move the Stargate outside of the Mountain.

"Whereas the technical arguments about how it is impossible didn't matter?" Veronica asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Of course! Impossible is just for people who lack imagination," Victoria chuckled, then she sighed. "I'd ask if you and Raul were sure, but..." she shrugged, "of course you'd be sure."

"There's no way to move the Stargate's dialing computers and power systems," Veronica repeated herself, sounding just a touch exasperated. _I didn't actually ask if you were sure!_ The courier protested in her head, but that was a weak defense, to say the least. "Not without technical infrastructure we don't have, and... honestly, I'm not even sure _how_ they got those supercomputers to actually interface with the Stargate itself. It's like..." she frowned, clearly searching for the right comparison.

"Using .44 ammo in a .357 pistol?" Victoria suggested. Veronica chuckled a little, but waved her hand dismissively.

"Of course you'd come up with a comparison using pistols. No... more like using an energy cell as ammunition in... like, a 9mm or something," Veronica shrugged, "I don't see how they made it work, but they did. But seeing that DHD in person, on the other world?" She shook her head, "I don't see how any number of supercomputers could make it work."

"Well, they made it work. But if we can't move it, we can't move it," Victoria shrugged. "I just don't see how we're gonna get anything out from there, in bulk. Kind of ruins the whole 'farming offworld' idea."

"Maybe not," Veronica said, a small, knowing smile playing across here features. Victoria raised an eyebrow and just looked at her, waiting for her to elaborate. Veronica hesitated for a moment, then, "It's not a sure thing, but when we were examining the retracting roof device, Raul and I have some ideas. I'm going to talk to the technical and science people here in Cheyenne while you're gone - they have a better idea of what this mountain can take, after all."

"Here's hoping you figure it out," Victoria said, slipping a few more canteens of water into her pack. Good sources of water were few and far between on the trip back to the Mojave - would be a little easier, since it was just her, but they'd had a few close calls the way here. Better to take advantage of the water here while she could. She looked back over at Veronica, who was seated in one of the chairs by the small table, watching her pack for the trip.

For a moment, Victoria thought she saw... something odd in Veronica's expression, but then it was gone. _Imagined it, probably._ She held back a sigh.

"Are you sure you want to stay here? I mean - you're welcome to come with me." She hadn't offered it to Veronica earlier, knowing she wanted to stay and play with all the toys here, but now that the prospect of not seeing Veronica for at least... two months? More, probably? Sure, they'd parted ways for a few days at a time, but never for more than that since they'd met, started travelling together.

Veronica hesitated for a moment before shaking her head, "You don't need me slowing you down. Besides... if the NCR finds out I used to be a member of the Brotherhood?" She shuddered a little at the idea. Victoria wanted to protest, defend her country's good name, but...

Well, when it came to the NCR's attitude towards former Enclave members and former Brotherhood members, the track record for both wasn't all that great. She'd heard about a few Brotherhood defectors further west - the best that could happen to them was being drafted into OSI, but under pretty heavy and restrictive limits about what else they were allowed to do.

"I agree with you that we need the NCR's help," Veronica said, "And I know you're a patriot, and I don't want to begrudge you actually _liking_ where you came from, but..." she shook her head, "I don't trust the NCR. The idea of what they'll do with everything they get out of the Stargate?" She shuddered again, "imperialism, expansion, overextension."

"You've been talking to Arcade again," Victoria remarked, crossing her arms in front of her chest, daring Veronica to deny it. "On one of his... rants." She almost said 'screeds', but that wasn't fair. He was never exactly _wrong_, not speaking without a basis, and given his personal history with the NCR, the Followers' history with the NCR, she couldn't begrudge him his issues, but...

_What exactly does he see as the endgame for the Wasteland? A bunch of tiny little statelets? Does he actually think that would last?_

She liked Arcade, held his intelligence and knowledge in great regard, but he sometimes was so hilariously naive about the realities of people - which was odd, given how much history he read, and the life he'd lived.

"A little. But I don't need to be Arcade to have a bad opinion about the NCR."

Victoria couldn't dispute that, so she just sort of nodded. Granted, the Brotherhood wasn't really in any position to criticize the NCR for overextension, but the NCR had done a lot to make Veronica's life unpleasant, at least indirectly.

"Fair enough," she said, vocalizing her nod. "Look, I'll grant you that plenty of the NCR's politicians are expansion-minded, though hardly all of them. And Kimball is certainly one the leading proponents for adding more territory for the Republic, and I'll even grant you that he has this coming election locked down, easy."

"I thought you said General Oliver was going to run against him? He's a war hero?"

"Haha, no. I'm sure that's what he thought, but going by the newspapers from back west that arrived between Second Hoover Dam and when we left, the pro-Kimball press - which is most of it - has been spilling all the details about how his General 'Wait and See' approach screwed the whole Mojave over - Nipton was burned on his watch, Nelson got lost because he kept hoarding men at the Dam and didn't try to push the Legion off the other side..." she laughed.

"Plus, the press - though not Kimbal explicitly - was giving credit to the victory to me." Victoria paused, grinning, then "Well, to Ambassador Crocker and Colonel Moore for being smart enough to hire me, anyway."

"Didn't Moore badmouth Crocker ever chance she got?"

"And then some. I'm sure it's weird for them to be painted as part of some grand plan for the two of them," Victoria shrugged, "But by the time the elections roll around, Oliver's going to have every casualty, civilian and military, between First and Second Hoover Dam pinned to him." She shook her head, "Couldn't happen to a nicer guy, really." The man's obsession with personal glory and hoarding men at Second Hoover Dam may have left her plenty of opportunities to make money and name for herself, but it also meant a lot of people died.

_Sure, he might have had the right idea about the battle itself, positioning the Rangers where he did, doubling down on the Heavy Troopers, but... he could have done a lot more for the Mojave if he'd been willing to free up some regular troopers, been willing to fight some smaller battles before Second Hoover Dam._

"So I'll grant that the NCR is gonna still have a bit of an expansion-oriented mindset for a while, but the NCR didn't just go to the Mojave for no reason, and the NCR wasn't overstretching itself just by being there. That was Oliver been an idiot and House constantly undermining the NCR. And the NCR did need the water and electricity from the Dam - but with all the costs incurred in the campaign..."

Victoria shrugged, "You don't have to worry about the NCR doing any expanding for a while. There's no public will for it. And Kimball has his eyes on getting reelected over and over until he dies, so..."

She didn't have proof on that, but she'd spoken to enough people who knew the guy better than she ever could, and much as she hated to admit it, Caesar was right that the NCR had a bad habit of just keeping the same people in power over and over until they died or screwed up big time. The presidency wasn't very Republican, in a lot of ways - it was more akin to a popular dictatorship. Like what the actual Julius Caesar was, according to Arcade.

_But we do have the Senate, and they check the president._ And that was something Caesar of the Legion never had. And given that the Roman Senate had killed the original Caesar, the Roman version was probably a lot more badass than the NCRs.

_Though I will say stabbing the guy - what was it, fifty something times or whatever? - feels absolutely absurd. Total overkill. _

Though, really, six bullets in the skull of the Caesar she'd killed was probably overkill too. She'd just wanted to get rid of his smarmy, self-confident smirk as he tried to convince her that he was the best hope for New Vegas, the Mojave and the Wasteland as a whole. That she, a woman born and bred in the NCR, would totally enjoy a great life under the Legion's authority.

_Given how many times the man supposedly broke his word with the tribals he conquored, I'm sure I'd have been ordered seized and raped right after Second Hoover Dam, or close enough. Unless he decided to make me his concubine or something._ He had leered at her for a few seconds right after she'd entered his tent, though she doubted the deranged old man would have been able to get it up anyway.

"He'll wait until they're finished digesting the losses from the Mojave campaigns and incorporating the new state. I imagine some of the independent communities near New Vegas that weren't formally part of the 'Mojave Wasteland' might ask to join the new state, but that's about it." Victoria shrugged again.

"I'm not saying your concerns are unfounded," she pressed on, Veronica looking unconvinced. "They're just... premature. Besides, with any luck, we'll get enough awesome technology from the Stargate that the NCR will have to stop and incorporate it all before expanding more." Victoria didn't really find the idea of NCR expansion - done well, anyway - as that bad of an idea. Overall, it was better than the alternatives, for most communities in the Wasteland.

Veronica grinned a little there. "Well, I suppose there is that. All kinds of new toys to play with, soon enough. Arcade is planning on talking Teal'c into teaching him Goa'uld, did he mention that?"

Victoria shook her head, "I don't think so, but it makes sence. We're going to need to learn how to read all those squiggles out there, or at least someone will have to." She looked at several extra cases of .357 and .44 ammo that had bullets made by the SGC's ammunition forge, then shoved those into her bag too. She'd carried heavier loads, but she'd rather have too many bullets than not enough, out there in the wastes.

"Alright. That's everything." She let out a sigh, then looked back to Veronica, opening her mouth, to say...

_What, exactly? 'Come with me to a country you're not fond of and abandon all the cool tech toys we've found just because I've got a crush on you and I'm too much of a chickenshit _cobarde _to say anything?' That'll go over great._

"Stay safe, Victoria," Veronica said, getting up off the chair. "And in one piece - if you're going to just leave me behind for two or three months, I'd better be getting you back whole and healthy." She hit Victoria gently on the arm. "Is that clear?"

Victoria smiled a little, "Crystal clear, Veronica." Before she could scare herself out of it, she leaned in and pulled Veronica close for a quick hug - doing her best to make it purely a friendly and platonic-seeming one. When she pulled back, she met Veronica's eyes, reluctantly pulling her hands to her sides. "I'll miss you." She said the last three words in a softer, gentler voice than she intended.

"You too," Veronica said back, her voice just as low. Victoria hesitated for another moment, but without any idea of what to say, she justed stepped back, grabbing her pack and slinging it over her shoulder, slipping her arms through the straps.

"See you in two to three months," she said in a more normal tone, and left her quarters, headed for the elevator.

On the road again.

Of course, compared to the potential wonders of the galaxy at large, the Wasteland didn't seem quite as... enticing, anymore.

**November 27th, 2282**

**Presidential Mansion, Shady Sands**

Captain Samantha Carter - Sam as she preferred to be called - had not known what to expect when she'd returned to OSI Central Headquarters after her work improving and updating the refurbished nuclear reactor in Junktown to find out she'd been summoned to the Presidential Mansion.

She had met President Kimball twice, though really only in passing, when the leader of the NCR had visited OSI Central to recieve reports on ongoing projects. She'd shaken his hand both times, exchanged a few pleasantries and that was about it. Her work with reactors, while important, was not the sort of high profile stuff that actually attracted much attention as long as everything went according to plan.

Which, for now, they had. There was still a lot to be done, but power was becoming easier and easier to manage in the various cities of the Republic, in greater spread to all home, and beyond the big cities further and further into the countryside. Especially now with the power coming in from Hoover Dam in larger - and cheaper - quantities than ever. House had charged the Republic through the nose for every kilowatt-hour. With Hoover Dam now directly under the management of the NCR, the power was being provided, with the only cost the actual cost of maintaining the dam and the flow of energy.

_Of course, a lot of people had to die for that to come._

"Captain Samantha Carter, seconded to OSI. I've been told to report to the President?" She told the guards at the front door. They checked a list confirmed she was on it, then briefly lowered the force-field protecting the entrance to let her through, after she surrendered her weapons - a combat knife and a service pistol, both of which she carried as a matter of course.

When she reached the antechamber to the President's Office - after passing another security checkpoint, though this one didn't have a force-field, she found the president's personal secretary at a desk, as well as a man in worn, plain, brahmin-leather shirt and pants, sitting at one of the chairs, as if waiting to be called in. He was handsome, in a rugged and weather-beaten sort of way, with short salt-and-pepper hair that worked better for him than most.

"Captain Carter?" the Secretary asked, looking up from her terminal at her entrance.

"Yes. That's - that's me." She nodded, then gestured to one of the empty chairs. "Do I just sit until he's -"

"He's ready for you now. Go on in," the Secretary nodded, and she opened the door into the President's Office as directed. The room was large and shaped like an oval, supposedly in keeping with the shape of the Old World's president's office. It was well decorated with art and small sculptures, both from the Old World and more recently. On one table was a collection of whiskeys and other alcohol, in glass bottles that looked more expensive than their contents, as well as glasses. The large desk at the center of the room, of course, had a well-organized chaos of papers and paperwork.

Seated behind the desk was President Kimball, and on the other side of the desk was a woman whose face Sam recognized, but she couldn't place it. She had olive skin, short black hair and wore what looked like a tailored business suit. Though the woman appeared unarmed, she sat on the edge of her seat, like someone long-used to reacting to threats, poised to act if there was any danger.

"Mister President, Sir," Sam sketched a salute and stood at attention for a moment.

"At ease, Captain," The President said. Despite his former career as a general in the NCR Army, Kimball now sat with the ease of a comfortable politician. "Let me introduce you to Victoria Fernandez - the Courier, as some have taken to calling her."

Samantha did a momentary double-take. "Miss Fernandez - it's a pleasure to meet you." She said, approaching the woman and extending a hand. The Courier stood and grasped her hand, offering a solid, firm handshake back. The woman didn't look like the stories said she was, but Sam had seen her photo in the paper and her face on recruitment posters since Second Hoover Dam - the NCR was cashing in on the stories of the Courier's enthusiasm to make up for the recent losses, as much as they could - because the Army was also starting to draw down and phase out some recruits, now that sheer manpower wasn't what they needed quite as much. So it was a bit of a balancing act.

Still, looking the woman over, feeling her strong grip and the look in her eyes, Sam could believe that this was the woman who had criss-crossed the Mojave, killed Caesar and even killed the legendary Lanius.

Sam was no stranger to combat, but the occasional skirmish with bandits inside the borders, or raiders on the frontier, was nothing compared to what this woman had supposedly dealt with.

"Likewise, Captain Carter. But please, call me Victoria."

"Have a seat, Captain," President Kimball gestured to another chair that one of the Presidential Guard brought up to the table, before returning to his positions along the wall. Sam sat down a sthe President continued.

"Miss Fernandez here has come with an interesting offer for the NCR. A once in a lifetime opportunity," he explained. He nodded to Victoria, and Victoria pulled out what looked like a small vial of lime-green, slightly glowing liquid. It looked almost like Uranium, but not quite - and of course, if it was Uranium the woman was carrying in her pocket, the woman's Pipboy would have been beeping, for one, presumably.

"Once in several lifetimes, Mr. President," Victoria corrected. She looked at Sam, "This is called Naquadah. I'm not a scientist myself, but some really smart people tell me it's capable of offering a great deal of energy. More than Uranium or Plutonium, even." She gave a number, one that lived up to the supposed claim.

But there was nothing on Earth that could do that, be that, supply that sort of energy.

"That's - that's impossible." Was the Courier just a con-artist, here to sell some bottom land to the NCR? "The Old World didn't have anything with that sort of power, and no lab today has the ability to synthesize some new element. I don't know what you're selling-"

"This isn't something I salvaged out of some Old World ruin - not exactly anyway," Victoria said with a grin. "Tell me, do any of these calculations look familiar to you." She took a small notebook from her pocket and handed it to Sam. In precise, neat writing, was line after line of copied down equations, data points and information. It took Sam a moment to realize what she was looking at, but only that.

Wormhole math. Theoretical astrophysics, the sort of thing that only she - and maybe one other person in all the Wasteland, tops - could even begin to understand, and only because she'd made a hobby out of studying the obscure and pointless pre-war science. Even as she flipped the pages, her brow furrowing, she realized she could only make sense of half of what she was looking at, if that.

"Where did you find- where did you copy this down from?" Sam asked, looking up from the notebook, meeting Victoria's gaze. "And how did you know I would have any idea what it is?"

"My friend Arcade. He used to be with the Followers. He told me about the time you dropped by their camp at the Old Mormon Fort, traded for anything they had on Astrophysics, let them copy what you had."

Sam remembered that - she'd passed through New Vegas to help maximize the power coming through from Hoover Dam - sure, they'd paid through the nose, but they'd needed every bit they could get. The OSI had little patience for the Followers, but they still had access to some of the best pre-war knowledge out there, and astrophysics was so useless that it hardly mattered if they traded what they had.

"As for were we found it - well, have you ever heard of a place called Cheyenne Mountain?" Sam shook her head. "What about something called NORAD?"

That did ring a bell. "Some sort of... Air Force Base, pre-war?" The beginnings of some sort of point - a guess, impossible as it might be - of what the Courier was getting at was starting to form. Had the Old World actually managed to leave Earth? Find something - out there?

No, that had to be nonsense. But...

"More or less, yeah. Among other things. It was built into the upper levels of Cheyenne Mountain - the place was a well-fortified bunker against nuclear attack. But _under_ NORAD was another project. Stargate Command. Where I found something very interesting. A device, made from this Naquadah, that is capable of opening a point to point wormhole to other planets. Planets where this Naquadah can be found. Planets where aliens live - planets totally free of radiation." She grinned, "and where all kinds of fancy technology can be found."

Sam stared at Victoria for a moment. She seemed one hundred eprcent genuine, absolutely confident in what she was saying. But equally... this was impossible. It had to be.

"The power requirements would be -"

"Insane. They are. Cheyenne Mountain has massive fusion generators to power the Stargate. And it uses a whole army of supercomputers to run the damn thing. But it's real. I went through it." She grabbed at a pile of pictures from the desk, and showed them to her.

A stone ring, in what did look like some sort of underground bunker. And then another one, of the ring being full of... something, a spout of what seemed like water shooting out of it. And then another, with a calm appearance, a vertical pool of 'water'... but it couldn't be that. Even in the photo it seemed to shimmer a little. And then pictures of people walking into it.

And then several photos of... what looked like a grassy, tree and bush filled landscape, the sort of place you rarely saw in the Wasteland, or at least in the western former United States...

"I have more proof, but I couldn't actually bring all the fancy toys with me here into this meeting, since most of them are weapons." Victoria assured, but Sam wasn't sure she _needed_ more proof. This was... impressive, all on it's own.

And it certainly made the math make sense.

It... it was too crazy _not_ to be true, right?

She looked back at the math. "Holy Hannah," she finally said. No. She believed Victoria. At least tentatively. "I want to see the rest of this proof but... I think I believe you." She looked at the vial of 'Naquadah' greedily. "And I want to analyze this. If what you're saying is even half true... it could revolutionize power in the NCR. We could do all _sorts_ of things."

"So I've been told by every other scientist from OSI I've spoken to," the President said, "Miss Fernandez specifically requested you because of your passion for this... astrophysics. She is proposing a partnership."

"With her?"

"With the independent settlement of Cheyenne. They're the ones who have physical possession of the Stargate by virtue of living in the long-opened upper levels of Cheyenne Mountain," Victoria said. "I was the one who actually accessed the long-sealed underlevels for Stargate Command."

Victoria then proceeded to lay out the details, in an obviously abridged form, of how she'd come to find the Stargate. Mr. House, having been alive since before the War, was actually one of the less wild rumors about the man. That he'd been in some fancy life-support machine, rather than a ghoul, was a little bit weirder. Victoria relayed how she'd found the mention of the SGC, Cheyenne Mountain, and the secure code in House's files, how she'd journeyed to Colorado, across the territory of the fragmented Legion, reaching Cheyenne Mountain, and then discovering the Stargate.

And stepping through it.

"It was... disorienting, at first, travelling through that Wormhole, but there was also a _rush_."

"How could you be sure you could breathe on the planet? Or that there was any atmosphere? How did - if the stargate is made from this... Naquadah, how is it on Earth? How did the Air Force even _make_ it!?" Sam asked, speaking quickly.

"They didn't. It... it was found. Buried in a place called Egypt, way over in Africa." She gestured grandly off to the side, as if gesturing towards Egypt. Sam didn't know that name offhand, but she did know Africa was a continent in the Eastern Hemisphere. "It was brought here, thousands of years ago. By aliens."

Sam coughed, "Aliens? Came to earth and brought this Stargate with them?"

"Yep," Victoria chuckled. "All those weird cranks living in a shack on the edge of town talking about UFOs and abductions and shit? They might have actually had a point." Sam blinked, at the casualness of Victoria cursing in the presence of the President, though when she glanced over at Kimball, she saw no reaction from him.

"And the aliens that brought the Stargate here brought humans from Earth, thousands of years ago, to all sorts of other worlds. And those humans are still there. Millions, upon millions of humans, all over the galaxy. On hundreds or even thousands of worlds, all free of radiation."

_Countless trading partners - the opportunities for food, raw materials, technology..._

"Holy Hannah..." she said again, stretching the oath out longer this time. "There's got to be a catch." There was always a catch in the Wasteland - find Hoover Dam, have to deal with House and the Legion. Find the Poseidon Energy plant in the Mojave, can't get the place to work for years.

"It's a doozy," Victoria agreed. "There's... bad guys out there. We don't know everything about them, but... they make Caesar look humble, and they have spaceships that can travel faster than light. It might take them a year or two to get here, apparently, but... they could be here. Plus side, they're busy killing each other. But... if we go out there, there's every chance we fight. A lot. Every time."

"However, I am convinced that the benefits outweigh that risk," President Kimball said. "While I admit, jumping headfirst into another conflict so soon after the Mojave is... risky, the nature of the Stargate and the distance involved means we can't and don't need to commit too many people, or even the resources we did into the Mojave campaign, all said and done."

"Does that mean you have decided what you want to commit to the project?" Victoria asked the President.

"A Hundred soldiers from the Army - all volunteering for a long deployment, and none with families that they can't bring with them, two squads of Rangers, an ample budget of caps and other useful materials, and six scientists from OSI, including Captain-Doctor Carter." He turned back to Sam. "Unless there's a pressing reason why you think you'd be of more use here. Miss Fernandez showed that math to several other OSI scientists, none of them understood any of it."

Carter shook her head, "No, no... I... I don't see how I'd be more useful refurbishing power plants back here in the NCR heartland. I'll be honest - I can only understand about half of what Victoria showed me, but what I can understand... it sounds amazing, sir. I'd volunteer for this chance even if you weren't ordering me to." She wasn't eager about crossing former Legion territory, or going so far from home, but she didn't really have much here anyway, apart from OSI. Her father, General Jacob Carter, had died two years ago, from Cancer, despite the best efforts of the NCR's doctors, and her brother still didn't really like to speak to her. He grudgingly returned any letter she sent, months after he'd receive them, but really, was that worth staying in the NCR, when she had the chance to actually put astrophysics to use?

_I never expected it, but I'm more than happy to embrace it._

"I'm glad to hear it." He looked to Victoria, "I'm still consulting with my advisors about the particulars of what sort of deal we want with Cheyenne, and what we'll accept, but in general terms, the suggestions you brought from this... Councilor Hammond are acceptable."

Victoria nodded. "I'm happy to hear it."

"Speaking of sending Rangers with you," He pressed a button on the intercom on his desk, contacting his secretary. "Send him in, please."

"Yes, Mr. President," the woman replied, and then after another moment, the older man that Sam had seen waiting in the antechamber walked in. The man gave a salute to the President when he arrived, but didn't stand at attention.

"Aaron. I was wondering when you'd have time for me," the man said with a slight smirk. "I've been waiting for hours." Sam raised an eyebrow, wondering who this was - from what the President said, this was a Ranger, but even the Rangers didn't tend to just greet the President so casually, did they? They were pretty loose on the formalities, but this loose?

"You've been there for one hour, at most, Jack," the President said, actually smiling for one moment, before introducing them. "Jack, meet Captain-Doctor Samantha Carter, from OSI, and Victoria Fernandez. Captain Carter, Miss Fernanez, meet Ranger Jack O'Neill."

"Happy to meet you both, I'm sure," Jack said, miming tipping his hat to both of them. "So, Aaron, what **finally** got you to pull me out of Baja? You sent basically everyone else onto Hoover Dam, but you left me behind to keep up the mission. Kinda makes a man feel unloved," he said, insincerely, putting a hand over his heart, as if genuinely upset.

"Okay, I've met a lot of Rangers, but never one... quite like you," Victoria said. She got up and offered him a hand as well. Sam followed suit - Rangers didn't exactly have traditional ranks, so unless this O'Neill was put in charge of the operation - which wasn't unlikely - it wasn't protocol to salute him, or call him sir.

"It's my god-given right as a Ranger to be a smartass," O'Neill said, "Most Rangers just don't embrace it like I do, that's all. So, I ask again - what's the big mission?"

"Travelling to other planets," Victoria said.

O'Neill paused, then looked to the President, raising an eyebrow. "No, really, what's the big mission."

"She's right, Jack." The President confirmed. "The pre-war United States government had alien technology and were using it to visit other worlds. And now the NCR has a chance to take advantage of what's out there."

"Well. That sounds... fun." He clapped his hands together, rubbing them a bit. "Tell me more."

"I'm afraid I have some more meetings, Jack. Captain Carter and Miss Fernandez can explain matters on the way to the demonstration."

"Demonstration?"

"The toys, Ranger. Among the things that are out there are some very fun weapons."

"Well then," he said, with an elaborate flourish, gesturing to the door. "After you." Sam wasn't sure what to make of the man's antics, but they did carry a certain charm. She followed Victoria out of the President's Office, O'Neill right behind her.


	8. A Long Road East

**Disclaimer:** I don't own it, yada yada.

Again, I had trouble getting the character's voices right, despite my best efforts. I think I did a little better, but only so much. I think once we get people going through the Gate, I'll have an easier time of it - Sam will get to nerd out about Tech, Jack will get to snark at the locals and the Goa'uld, etc. I have actually written these characters IC before, in other fic, so I know it's possible for me to do it. The downside of ripping characters from their contexts like I did for this fic is that it can be hard to regain their voices. But, as I said, it should be much easier.

Though do remember, their contexts are changed - the details of Jack's backstory are different, though they haven't been revealed in detail, and Sam's father is already dead at this point.

On the plus side, we'll see a second mission through the Stargate begin next chapter. That'll probably take a few chapters, but then missions after that should be shorter (in terms of writing space), once everything is all set up.

Wasteland Gate

By Kylia

Chapter 8: A Long Road East

**December 10th, 2282**

**Near Shady Sands, NCR**

It had taken a lot longer than Victoria would have liked, for Kimball to put together all the personnel and resources he was sending to Cheyenne. She'd hoped once a deal was made, they could get moving within a few days. Instead, even once Kimball and his advisers and cabinet agreed to a draft treaty that the NCR was signing with Cheyenne - assuming the Cheyenne Council approved - it still took nine days for everything to get put together, and the NCR had already started gathering the people before then anyway.

But they had finally assembled it. 100 soldiers - well, 98, but close enough - 8 Rangers, including Jack O'Neill, and six people from OSI, including Sam Carter. And finally, Kimball had added one last person at the last minute. A bureaucrat, a bland-looking bald guy named Richard Woolsey. Between his glasses, suit and meticulous demeanor when she'd first seen him, Victoria assumed the man was a born accountant, just some bean counter assigned as much as a fig leaf to civilian oversight and to handle logistical tasks. She hadn't even been sure he'd be up to the long trip to Cheyenne.

He certainly looked tired, but he seemed more capable of handling the march than she'd expected. He'd shown more pragmatism than she'd expected and not actually worn his old-world style suit for the march, wearing instead practical, understated traveller's clothes. He did still wear his fancy old-world watch, however, the thing probably worth more caps than an NCR Trooper earned in three months or more.

Kimball had explained that Woolsey was going along as the civilian representative, speaking with Kimball's authority on matters not related to the military or science, but still related to the agreement with Cheyenne and the Stargate. He was also very nominally in charge of the NCR forces being sent to Cheyenne, but only in the most general of senses.

For actually running the show in practice, there was Ranger O'Neill, though he preferred Jack. In order to ensure he had no guff from the NCR Troopers and their officers, the President had given Jack the rank of Colonel in the NCR Army, at least for the duration, making him the highest ranked officer on this mission.

He wore the rank lightly. She watched inspect the tents being set up as the sun set, and reprimand a few who set theirs up wrong or too close to the temporary latrine trenches that were being quickly dug but she also saw him repeatedly tell the soldiers not to salute him. He cared more about the practicalities than the forms of command. Which fit the Rangers. But it wasn't necessarily the best idea for soldiers, in most cases.

On the other hand, these soldiers were not likely to be taking part in large, pitched battles, given the bottleneck of the Stargate. So the informal approach of the Rangers, centered around small-unit tactics, and group cohesion through comradire was more likely to be useful.

_A hundred seems excessive, but we'll probably want some on some off-world base._

The idea of having an off-world base hadn't even occurred to Victoria until Carter had suggested it, but the woman had made convincing arguments.

"Based on everything you're saying, the Stargate - and the Mountain itself - is a massive logistical bottleneck. Ideally, yes, we can use it to get clean, rad-free food from other worlds. But to do that in bulk would require moving the Stargate, or massive internal remodeling of the entire Mountain, and a lot more resources than even Cheyenne has, it sounds like." Carter had explained a few nights ago as they sat and discussed the plans for the 'Stargate Initiative', as Kimball had decided to officially label the NCR's contribution to the whole thing.

"Well, they are working on doing some of that, but yeah, there's only so much they can do, true," Victoria had been forced to admit.

"So we're going to have a lot of backlog, potentially, stuff coming in, through the Stargate, but not as easy a time moving it." Carter had gone on, moving a few of the knick-knacks on the table around to illustrate her point, somewhat unnecessarily. "It would be good to have a staging area and storage zone for this - we could move things we're trading with other people there first, and bring the stuff they give us there and bring it in slowly, so we don't end up with a logjam of anything in the whole chain."

Victoria hadn't expected the logistical insight from the woman, but she made a good point. As a Courier, Victoria had made a point to never deliver a package or letter she couldn't put in her pocket, even a large one, so her understanding of logistics was, in all fairness, limited, to say the least.

"But more importantly, we need a place to study things that are not necessarily safe to bring back to the Mountain - where people live. If we bring anew power source back with us, we should study it somewhere where an explosion might not kill a whole town above us." Sam added. "And quarantine as well. Easier to do off-world."

"The local doctors at Cheyenne did talk about quarantine plans, yeah." The Wasteland was full of all sorts of illnesses - it would suck if they brought back some super-virus, like those bioengineered ones before the war, the New Plague or whatever it had been called, if Victoria remembered the old newspapers and books she'd read right, back with them through the Stargate.

She'd enjoyed her conversations with Carter, except when the woman got too technical, and Victoria couldn't answer her questions. Which was a lot of the time, when she got technical.

Even after hanging around with Veronica and Arcade as much as she had, there was a lot of stuff Victoria still hadn't picked up. She could hack your average computer pretty well, but as much through trial and error practice as anything else. Most computers had fairly standard security, when hooked up to a PipBoy. Without one, she'd have a much harder time, or she'd need to know a password. With it, she could use the programs already on it to break through a lot of the security.

Carter was chomping at the bit to see the Stargate, and when they'd stopped for the night, Victoria almost thought the other woman would have forced on ahead on her own.

Once the camp was fully set up, Victoria, who was staying off to the side, away from the main body of NCR soldiers, with her own small cookfire, fiddled around with her Pip-Boy for a while, playing a game of Pipfall briefly, before muttering a curse when she lost.

"Pipfall, huh?" Jack said from behind her. Victoria let out another curse, louder this time, as she realized she hadn't heard him approaching at all.

"How the hell did you-"

"Get behind you?" Jack interrupted, coming around to sit in front of the fire, across from her. "Well, apart from the fact that you stopped paying attention to anything but losing at your game."

"Well, I've never been very good at PipFall. Or any of these little games, really. You?"

"Only thing computers are good for," Jack said. "Not that I get much chance to play, since I don't have one of your nifty little bracelets."

"I didn't always have one either," Victoria shrugged. "Sometimes I don't know if it's worth it."

Jack cocked his head to the side a little, raising an eyebrow, "Yea, I can see that. I mean, why _would _you want something that kept track of your health so well, came with a geiger counter that was one of the best in the Wasteland, had a radio and of course has a way to make sure you always hit what you're aiming for."

"It's heavy, bulky, a nightmare to take off and put on during those rare time it's safe to take off, and getting used to VATS is it's own problem," Victoria shrugged, "And of course, using VATS is one of the most painful things I've ever experienced."

"Worse than a Cazadore sting?"

Victoria considered for a long moment, "No, no, those are definitely worse. Been stung by a lot of those goddamn bugs?"

"Once was enough for me," Jack nodded. "Haven't been back to the Mojave in a long time, so not much chance to run into the pesky little buggers. Are they as bad as I remember?"

"I'm sure they're worse than you remember," Victoria countered. "They always seem to be worse each time. More of them, faster, more painful..." she shuddered. "Not as bad as some of the things that have happened to me, but up there."

Jack scoffed, "Really, what's worse than a Cazador sting?"

"Well, there's the time I got shot in the head."

"You look pretty lively for a corpse," Jack countered, taking a sip of water from his canteen.

"I didn't die."

"But you got shot in the head."

"Yeah, I'm not really clear about that either."

"So the stories about you waking up from the dead to get back the package some mucky-muck in New Vegas are actually true?" Jack chuckled, "Whatdaya know?"

"For a given value of the word. But apart from the headshot, there was how close I was to death after taking on Caesar's whole camp at Fortification Hill one-handed. Smart move on my part there. I had my brain, spine and heart removed and replaced with cybernetic versions once. Had a conversation with my own brain, even."

Jack stared at her for a long moment. "Good conversation?"

"My brain was kind of a dick, actually." Victoria chuckled. "And you don't believe me."

"Pretty crazy story," Jack shrugged. "But you don't look like you're lying. Which could just mean you're nuts."

"Enough people tell me that I'm crazy that they're probably right." She looked at Jack carefully for a moment. "You're familiar with that, I'm sure. I've been asking around since we met in Kimball's office. There's a lot of crazy stories about you too. You and Kimball go back a long time, they say."

"True. And he was usually the one calling me crazy. Until I told him he was crazy going into politics. He told me that after working alongside me for so long, he'd gotten used to crazy."

"To crazy," she pulled out her own canteen, holding it up as if making a toast, and mimed directing it towards him.

"Cheers," Jack mimicked the gesture, sipping at his canteen again. "Ever thought about writing a book? Setting the record straight?"

"Nobody would believe me. And I'm not really interested in fame." It had come to her, and she used it when it was practical - reputation had it's many merits - but ultimately, it was more trouble than it was worth for a Courier. Which is one reason she'd be so willing to trek all the way to Colorado.

And she _still_ hadn't escaped her reputation.

_Well, I'm sure I'll escape it on other planets._ If she ran into people who knew about Hoover Dam on another planet, she'd probably just shoot herself then and there, and be done with it.

"I'd have to shoot anyone who read my book," Jack replied. Victoria raised an eyebrow. "Most of what I've done is classified, even by Ranger standards."

"Even whatever it was you and the other Rangers were doing in Baja?" She still didn't know the answer to that one.

"Especially Baja," Jack replied.

Victoria debated pressing the issue, but the good-natured, amused note in Jack's eye seemed to have faded a little as he said that, so she decided to leave off well enough alone.

"Fair enough," Victoria waved a hand, "consider the question forgotten. Better question: What do you think about... this?"

"Sounds crazy, and I'm kind of expecting it to all be a load of crap," Jack admitted. He paused a moment, considering, "But if it's true... well, there has to be a catch, doesn't there? There's always a catch in the Wasteland. Kimball and the NCR reach the Mojave, and they find out that Hoover Dam is intact... and the whole place is filled with Khans, Raiders, hostile tribals, the Legion is just on the other side of the river..."

He gestured off to the East, in the general - very general - direction of Cheyenne Mountain.

"Now we get a way to find radiation free food easy? Whole planets free of rads? And the way there is pretty damn small, can't be moved... and we've got bad guys out there that, from what you say, make Caesar look like a cuddly bunny."

"Bunny?"

"Pre-war animal. Cute, fluffy. About yea-high," He held his hand a foot or so above the ground. "Hopped around, ate plants, couldn't hurt anyone even if they wanted to."

It took Victoria a moment to register the word 'fluffy'. Out in the wasteland, 'fluffy' didn't describe anything. There were some breeds of dog back in the heart of the NCR that applied. And puppies were always 'cute', but she couldn't think of much else that was. Most dogs she saw were mangy, near-feral brutes, if they weren't even worse at the hands of their Legion trainers.

"Well, if the intel we have is to be believed, they're definitely that bad. Fortunately, they're a little busy."

"I heard. Big fight to find out who gets to be top snake," Jack mused. "Want to try to rob them blind while they're busy?"

"It's worked before for me. This is just... bigger." Victoria chuckled darkly, "Besides, what can they do to Earth that we haven't done to it?"

"That's some... interesting logic you're using," Jack said after staring at her for a long moment. "The kind that... isn't."

"Well, it's not your Earth Logic, but now we can go to other planets," Victoria replied.

"Ya think you'll have better luck peddling that logic in space?"

"Probably not, but what's the harm in finding out?" Victoria knew she sounded blase at the prospect of aliens attacking, but she didn't really think she was wrong, in some ways. After everything humanity had done to themselves here on Earth, what else could a Goa'uld do? If the Great War couldn't wipe them out, space lasers couldn't either. And once they landed troops to finish the job...

Well, humans were ornery cusses, and she'd _love_ to see a team of Jaffa go up against a Deathclaw, or even an entire nest.

Just... from a safe distance.

**January 8th, 2283**

**Outskirts of Town, Cheyenne**

The trip back took longer with the whole team than the first trip with a small group. They got less travelling done each day, needing to stop, set up bigger camps, make sure everyone had enough food. The Brahmin carried a lot of the supplies, supplemented by hunting, buying from the local communities - usually with Legion money stripped from the corpses of Legionnaires from this or that splinter faction.

They were all pretty terrible at fighting, the Legionaries of today, survivors from Second Hoover Dam, the reserves that didn't get called up, garrison troops, and new recruits, subjected to far less effective training than before. Or at least trained by poorer officers.

But despite that, despite the size of the group, they'd gotten attacked by small groups or Legionaries, or even larger groups, every now and then. Most of the troopers didn't get a chance to fight - hell, even Victoria often found herself obsolete. Irreverent and unserious though he might often see, Jack was deadly in a fight, and alongside the rest of the Rangers along for the ride, it was a simple matter to deal with these second and third rate enemies.

They didn't even take any casualties - a few wounds, including a few pretty serious ones, but no one died, and they were never delayed by much.

But the trip still took slower.

But now, finally, they were here. Victoria had gone on ahead alone to let the Fort Carson people know, so they could radio ahead to Cheyenne, and she'd been surprised at the progress inside the camp. More permanent structures set up, business seemed to be handling itself well. She'd asked around, and apparently Cheyenne had decided to turn the town into basically it's marketplace - rather than bringing traders all the way to Cheyenne, they bought and sold most things through shops here. And a lot of trade had been coming in from points south and east, with Cheyenne spending a lot of money on all sorts of odd things.

The Stargate wasn't exactly classified, in Cheyenne, but it wasn't something they'd spread the word of beyond the town much, even if she heard a few rumors in Fort Carson. Word was spreading, as it always did, unless you tried to hide it.

_Who is there to hide it from? _Short of the Brotherhood and the NCR, there was probably no one else on this side of the Mississippi with the resources or numbers to really make a hard fight against Cheyenne. The community was too defensible, and they had plenty of tech.

_And getting more._

"Holy Hannah," Samantha Carter murmured as she looked at the wrecked ruin that was the mountain ahead of them. "It must be as sturdy as a vault in the sublevels."

"More, probably," Victoria countered. "Or at least, it wasn't designed by sick bastards running experiments."

"You can't call what went on in the Vaults experiments," Carter countered, sounding indignant, and like this was a conversation she'd had before. "Even leaving aside how monstrous it all was, what exactly were some of them supposed to test or prove?" She shook her head, definitely indignant. "The Vaults were 'experiments' the way a child pushing buttons on a computer asking 'what does this button do' is an experiment."

"You... sound quite... passionate about this?"

"It's a common argument in OSI. There's a whole faction of us that think that, evil or not, the Vaults gave us useful data. Useful for what?" Carter shook her head again. "101 Ways To Drive People Insane?" She sighed.

"It's quite impressive what these people have done, so far from the NCR," Woolsey said, walking by them. He had his suit back on, even had a briefcase. He looked every inch the Shady Sands lawyer, ready to get his rich client off on a technicality. Nobody on the expedition seemed to like or trust Richard Woolsey, but he had pulled his weight, more or less, on the trip. Man couldn't fight, and hadn't tried to, but he also hadn't caused any issues, and he had handled his logistical duties pretty well.

Born bean counter, like she'd figured.

"Well, the NCR isn't _actually_ the heart of all civilization in the former United States," Victoria noted.

"Of course not. But the relative peace and general prosperity on the West Coast the NCR has fostered is what has enabled us to have such a high standard of living. With a much smaller population base, and a lot less resources, the people of Cheyenne have done quite well for themselves, building a town here on the surface out of the ruins of the mountain and surrounding material."

He looked back towards Fort Carson, "And they've managed to make refugee resettlement a profitable enterprise, at least indirectly."

"Because profit is what matters when it comes to refugees," Victoria looked at Woolsey, screwing up her face in mild distaste. Of course the bean counter would think like that.

"Helping refugees is all well and good, but not if it drains you of everything you have in the process. It's the duty of any responsible government to put it's resources where they'll do the most good for their own people." Woolsey replied, firmly, stiffly.

"Well, there's something worth agreeing to in that," Victoria looked back towards the mountain at the sound of Hammond's voice as he approached them. Mitchell and about a dozen CDV soldiers, including four in power Armor, were with him, and Victoria thought she saw others in position all around the outer edges of the town and it's defenses.

None were making hostile or even threatening movies, but Hammond obviously wanted to make it clear his people could defend themselves if things went south.

Behind the, she saw a few other people from Cheyenne's government, including Hammond's friend Hayes, and -

_Veronica_.

And Arcade and Raul, she noted after a long moment's staring. But mostly, her eyes were on Veronica for a long moment, before she realized she needed to make introductions. She tore her eyes away from the former Scribe, and then set to work on that.

"Councilor Hammond, this is Richard Woolsey, Captain-Doctor Samantha Carter and Colonel Jack O'Neill is the one coming towards us," she said after half-turning to see him. She introduced just the most important three for now.

"Richard Woolsey, NCR Special Representative to Cheyenne and the Stargate. Pleased to meet you," Woolsey said formally, holding his hand out. Hammond accepted it and they shook. "I look forward to this being a fruitful partnership between our communities."

"As do I, Mr. Woolsey. Welcome to Cheyenne." Hammond agreed. He didn't speak with the same stiff manner as Woolsey, but he did keep his tone formal nonetheless. He turned to Carter. "Captain Carter? Welcome. I'm sure we'll have a lot for you to do - the scientists here in Cheyenne have been eagerly awaiting your expertise in Astrophysics to help them understand the Stargate better."

"I have been wanting to see it since I heard about it, Councillor," Carter shook his hand when offered.

Jack reached the front of the group, "Howdy," he waved a little, then looked at the assembled soldiers. "Should I be feeling unwelcome?"

"Just a precaution. When you hear over a hundred foreign soldiers are coming to visit... worth being prepared." Hammond reassured him. He held out a hand. "I take it you're in charge of these men?"

"The soldiers, yeah. Normally I'm just a Ranger, but someone has to be in charge of all these fine troopers, and Aaron - President Kimball - decided it should be me. Not sure why."

"And your relationship to Mr. Woolsey?"

"Good question. Woolsey?" He turned to the man.

"Colonel O'Neill is in charge of the military component of the NCR's contribution to our joint venture." Woolsey explained, refusing to just use normal words. "Officially he reports to me, as the President's direct representative but as he has the ear and trust of President Kimball, my orders are to give him a free hand for his responsibilities." Woolsey did an excellent job staying professional there, but there was a slight twitch which made Victoria think that Woolsey was less than thrilled about that part of his instructions.

"I will, however, be managing the non-military aspects of the NCR's end of our partnership," Woolsey went on, "such as technology sharing and contribution of raw and finished materials and financial resources as appropriate."

"I see. Well then, we should probably set to work negotiating that partnership." Hammond looked back to Jack, "There's room in the lower levels of the base, the ones that were part of the old Stargate Program, to house most of your men, but we might need to keep some up here on the surface too."

"Somehow, I think they'll manage. Besides, they could use a chance for some R&R. Do your bars take caps?" It was bulky, but the NCR had decided that caps would be more practical for this, since Victoria had reported that some shops this far out took them, having adopted the practice decades ago from people who adopted it from people who adopted it from the Hub's caravans.

Though some communities out here claimed to have also come up with the idea independently, she'd heard.

Hammond chuckled, "They do."

"Swell. Let me get everything sorted out, and I'll be _thrilled_ to join you and... Dick for the political dickering." Jack turned back to the Troopers, and started giving a few orders. Victoria tuned him out and approached Veronica, Arcade and Raul.

"Victoria!" Veronica smiled broadly, and that was when Victoria noticed the other woman was wearing a _dress!_ Not the formal one she'd given her, but a more casual looking one, like you saw in pre-war pictures of a housewife or something. It had sort of a faded dark blue color. Might have actually been pre-war.

"Told you I'd be back. Took longer than I planned though," Victoria smirked.

"And you're even in one piece." Veronica grinned.

"You did give me explicit orders to stay in one piece. What else could I do?" Victoria chuckled. She pulled Veronica in for a hug, holding it for perhaps a few moments too long to be totally platonic, but she couldn't help herself. "You doing good?"

"_Amazing_. They have dresses here, Victoria. _A lot_. Made here, or brought in from the east." She smiled ruefully, "I've probably spent more than I should on them, but..." she giggled happily, reminiscent - though not quite as loud - as the veritable 'squee' she'd made when Victoria had given her that fancy dress from the White Glove storeroom.. "I don't wear them when I'm working on the tech of course, but most of the rest of the time!?" She let out a brief exhale. "So the NCR decided to come through in a big way."

"I'm a little surprised Kimball agreed to commit this much, but apparently I'm more persuasive than I thought," she agreed, then she turned to Arcade and Raul.

"Arcade, Raul," she gave Arcade a quick hug as well, though shorter than the one she gave Veronica, and with Raul, she just gave him a small nod and he nodded back- the ghoul wasn't a very huggy person.

"Boss. Took the scenic route?" Raul asked.

"Something like that, feels like," Victoria told him. "And how have you two been? Keeping busy?"

"Very," Arcade nodded. "There's been a lot to do, with changing the interior of the mountain, setting up protocols and rules and policies for all sorts of problems that could arise offworld. Been trying to make sense of the power systems for the base - I think we didn't understand that Naqudah stuff properly."

"I'm sure Carter will be interested in that." If Arcade wasn't gay, she'd think the two nerds were perfect for eachother, though she still suspected they'd be great friends. "She's got a lot of theories about the stargate - and most of them went right over my head."

"There's always something that needs fixing. And they respect age here. They actually put me in charge of a team of mechanics and engineers. Right alongside this other fellow. Guy named Siler." Raul explained.

"He must be noteable of you wouldn't bring him up."

"Real smart, learned everything on the job. But he's got a habit of getting himself electrocuted."

"And surviving?" Victoria had trouble believing that, but Raul wasn't the type to make up stories.

"Unless he's a zombie without the decay," Raul shrugged.

"Lucky him." Victoria chuckled. "Obviously you guys had plenty to do while I wasn't here. And some interesting things happened at the NCR. Why don't I buy you all a drink?" She smiled, just happy to be back with her friends after the long trip away from them. She'd missed them all - not just Veronica - more than she'd expected.

"Sounds good to me." Veronica said, the other two nodding along with her.

**January 8th, 2283**

**Sublevel 23, Cheyenne Mountain**

**Victoria Fernandez's Quarters**

Of course, with all the NCR troopers in town all of a sudden, the bar was crammed full, so after buying some bottles for everyone, including some of the local moonshine for Veronica, they decamped to her quarters, all seated in chairs, or on the edge of the bed, in Victoria's case.

"...and then he sold me the protectron for half the price he'd been asking for. Just to get me to shut up." Veronica finished the story, smiling slyly.

"You're lucky he didn't try and force the issue, _chica_," Raul pointed out. "Doesn't usually work out like that when you call out a trader for selling junk."

"Speaking from experience?"

"Something like that," Raul agreed. "But then, Cheyenne's a lot better than northern Mexico or Arizona could be, so..." he shrugged, sipping at his beer. He'd once told Victoria that he preferred tequila, but that a good beer was a close second, though he missed the ones brewed in Mexico, and that a few decades back, he'd paid an impressive - or absurd - amount of money for one a trader had, passed on from trader to trader until it reached him.

"I could have handled him if he decided to make a scene," Veronica countered, shrugging.

"Of course you could have, but there was no reason to provoke him like that." Arcade chimed in.

"He was selling barely-working jury-rigged laser pistols as if they were fully functioning refurbishments!" Veronica countered. "The man would have armed people and let their guns fizzle out in the second firefight. He deserved to be called out for it."

"And then you shut up for a deal on a protectron."

"After everyone in Fort Carson's trader section heard me point out, in detail, everything wrong with those pistols." Veronica pointed out, pressing her case on Arcade. "If he can unload those duds for anything more than a tenth of what he had been asking for without going _pretty far afield_, I'll eat my power fist."

"He was heading northeast last he was seen." Arcade noted, sipping water. He'd drunk only half his beer, being the lightweight drinker among the four of them. Raul could carry his booze the best, though that came as much from being a ghoul as anything else.

_Actually I don't think I've even seen him buzzed, when you get down to it._

"The Legion has a pretty brief way with anyone who sells them crap, from what Cass told me," Victoria commented. "Plus, I don't mind the Legion having their weapons fail on them at an inconvenient moment."

"There is that," Arcade admitted. "Speaking of the Legion, did you run into problems with them?"

"Quite a few. The silly idiots kept attacking us on the way back. But Casear must have taken his best guys to Hoover Dam and the Mojave, because these ones were mostly incompetent, barely had any discipline."

"Makes sense, much as anything involving the Legion makes sense. But do you think there's any danger of them uniting?"

Victoria shook her head, "Not for good while. I spoke to a few locals when we passed through towns nominally under the 'protection' of one warlord or another. Things have stabilized a bit from the immediate aftermath. You've got Legates in Denver, Two-Sun, Flagstaff, Malpais, Res and Pheonix, which is less than used to be. Territory isn't changing hands quite as much either. Nobody can take out another one without risking their rear to another Legate."

She chuckled after a moment, "Sounds like how Teal'c summarized the situation for the Systems Lords, now that I think about it."

"Well, the Systems Lords each sound like what Caesar would be like if he was immortal, so that makes sense." Arcade muttered. "The man was insane."

"No argument from me." Victoria agreed. "Speaking of Teal'c, how he acclimating?"

"Well enough, I guess. He got stir crazy here in the mountain, so he went up, took to doing patrols with the CDV guys between filling everyone in on everything he knows about the Goa'uld. And teaching Arcade the language."

"Still a lot to learn, but I think I've started to figure out the basics. I just wish the Air Force had left some of Dr. Jackson's notes behind." Victoria remembered the name, but she couldn't place it. Her confusion must have shown on her face. "Doctor Daniel Jackson. He's the guy who figured out the Stargate, and from what little we can tell from the files in the computer, the chief linguist on the entire program. Worked on translating the Goa'uld language. Apparently it's similarity to the language they used in ancient Egypt, so he had a head start."

"But when the Air Force left, they took all his books, all his notes." Arcade sighed, "It's very annoying."

"I can imagine. But how's Teal'c taking the surface? We hadn't gotten around to explaining the whole 'we destroyed ourselves' bit when I left."

"He's not the most expressive of folks," Raul said. "He wasn't happy, but he's found a good challenge in all the wildlife."

"He's planning on taking down a Deathclaw, apparently." Veronica said.

"Really?"

"He already went toe-to-toe with a Yao-guai. Taunted it and wounded it with a few well-placed shots from his staff weapon, then broke it's skull in with the other end when it came close." Veronica said. "I didn't see it, but it was the talk of the town a few weeks ago."

Victoria had taken on her share of Yao-Guais, but always at a distance, and usually with VATS to back her up.

"Well, if he decides to take on a Deathclaw, I'd love to watch. God knows the Wasteland could use less of the things."

"If only we could just train them and send them through the Stargate at some of these System Lords," Veronica mused. "Apparently all the words with the best tech are too well guarded to go for. But if some monster rampages through..." she shrugged.

"When did you get so bloodthirsty?"

"When it comes to these Goa'uld, as soon as Teal'c told us about Moloch." Victoria soon found herself very glad that she wasn't in the middle of sipping her drink when Veronica told her all about the System Lord Moloch. It was apparently mostly rumor and second hand, but Teal'c believed it - Moloch had taken to burning the daughters of his Jaffa alive, and he wasn't that shy about doing the same to the baby girls born amongst his slaves, although he did let a limited number of them live.

"And sure, he might be extreme, but... these bastards operate on a level that even Caesar wasn't, and with even more power." Veronica said, softly, but with an iron core to her voice Victoria had only heard a few times before. "Any one of them could be just like him. And I'm tired of not being able to do anything to stop people like them."

"So what, you want to go take them on head on?" Victoria asked. "I mean, I know I killed Caesar head-on, but look how that turned out?"

"You were barely held together by the end, yeah." Veronica let out a sigh. "No, I'm not saying we charge in. I just... these monsters are worse than anything in the Wasteland, and with their technology, so much good could be done."

"Save the Galaxy one dead Jaffa at a time?" Raul sounded doubtful.

"The Jaffa aren't really the problem," Arcade pointed out. "Just as much the slaves as anyone else. Just like most Legionaries were... are."

It was eerie, really, how many similarities there were between the Legion and the Goa'uld, Victoria considered. Every time she thought more about one, she was reminded of the other, and everyone else seemed to notice the similarities too.

"Right now, we need to focus on finding more of the tech. Hey, maybe if we're lucky we can even steal a ship." Victoria offered. "Someday. Undermine them on the low-level. Nibble at the sides. As long as they keep fighting each other... well, if we do it right, maybe we can be another version of Teal'c Phantom Godslayers."

"If we can pull it off..." Veronica mused. She held her bottle up, "to exploring through the stargate, getting tech, doing some good, and killing some would-be gods."

"I can drink to that." Victoria agreed, sipping at her beer. She paused for a long moment. "I hate to sound a bit... I dunno, sappy, but I don't think I said this earlier: I'm glad to be back here, with all of your. I missed you - all three of you. Spent a lot of time wandering alone, forgot how nice it was to have friends. Then I had you three," and Cass and Boone, true. "Then over three months of being back to not having you around? It wasn't fun. And I know I'm not always the easiest friend."

"The point is - it would have been easy for you three to not come with me, and leave me alone again. And that... that would have sucked. So...Thanks for agreeing to come on this mad little idea of mine," she finished, realizing she might be a bit tipsy. She put her beer down. _Enough of that._

"Seems like it might just work out pretty well for us all." She finished.


	9. Raid, Ransack, Return, Rinse, Repeat?

**Disclaimer: **As Always, I don't own Stargate SG-1 or Fallout: New Vegas

As promised, this chapter will have the second expedition through the Stargate begins.

Unfortunately, many of the worlds from canon don't always work for every story, even allowing from the RPG. But I will be using canon worlds on many other missions.

We do see Jaffa using horses and other livestock, and given that we don't really see the Goa'uld have any land vehicles, and their general unwillingness to hand around fancy tech when manual labor will do, the idea of Jaffa Cavalry makes sense.

Epona was a Celtic goddess of horses that the Romans adopted.

Wasteland Gate

By Kylia

Chapter 9: Raid, Ransack, Return, Rinse, Repeat?

**January 12th, 2283**

**Sublevel 27, Stargate Command**

**Briefing Room**

"So, we're settled then?" Victoria said, looking around the table. "Because I don't want to get up, get to the door and then have someone raise an objection. Again." Okay, granted, that had been only once, and Woolsey had actually made a good point, but still. "I'd like to go through the Stargate again before I'm dead."

"Given how complicated these affairs are, I don't think the negotiations taking four days is all that unreasonable, Miss Fernandez," Woolsey commented, his characteristic precise stiffness unchanged, despite the last four days of horse trading between the NCR and Cheyenne, with Victoria stuck playing referee.

Hammond and O'Neill both trusted her to do the job fairly, and she had. She was a citizen of the NCR, she loved her homeland and she wanted to see it do well. Just not at the expense of people who were just as capable of building themselves up on their own.

_Ideal scenario is that Cheyenne becomes the center of another state in the NCR, but that's impractical for now._ Not until the Legion's fragments between Hoover Dam and here could be swept aside, and that would be decades, probably. NCR needed a breather now that the Mojave and more of the land of Nevada had been absorbed and was being integrated.

So with that ideal scenario unavailable, Victoria wanted to see Cheyenne get a fair deal out of this. Hammond wasn't an idiot, and despite being a bean counter, Woolsey didn't seem interested in trying to stack the deck in favor of the NCR too much, though he'd tried to pull a few small tricks in the language of the final agreement. And maybe a few more she hadn't caught. But nothing large enough to poison the deal.

"What can I say, I'm more used to action," Victoria shrugged. "But we're all agreed then? A five-man committee will oversee the day to day management of the Stargate Project - myself, Woolsey, Hammond, Mitchell and O'Neill. Woolsey and O'Neill can be replaced by the NCR President, as they serve in their capacities as civilian and military heads of the NCR side of the project. Mitchell serves because he's in charge of the CDV, and Hammond as the representative of the Cheyenne Council - and they can replace you. And I can just nominate the successor to my seat however I want. As long as they aren't an official in the Cheyenne or NCR governments." It was a cumbersome system, perhaps, but it should work for their needs for now. She hadn't really planned on ending up on the leadership of the Project, and she'd probably just leave someone to sit in her place while she was offworld most of the time, but she'd been talked into being on it as a tiebreaker, if it came to that. And her own experiences in the wider wasteland offered a 'unique perspective'.

_The last thing I wanted was to be even ankle deep in bureaucracy. Now I'm at least knee-deep in it. Yay!_

"Agreed." Hammond nodded. "And we're agreed on all the prices the NCR can pay for supplies and materiel, beyond what they bring in as needed. And adjudication for any criminal complaints between our respective sides, if something happens, god forbid."

"There's already been a few brawls," Victoria said.

"Something important," Hammond clarified. "Soldiers brawl - trying to stop it would be a waste, as long as it doesn't get out of hand."

Mitchell nodded in agreement. "Harmless, so far. Taking stock of each other - your troopers are good men, O'Neill. Some of my people were expecting them to be pushovers in a one on one fight."

"Oh, we didn't bring the pushovers with us. Have to make a good impression after all," O'Neill quipped. The man was constitutionally incapable of taking anything one hundred percent seriously, it seemed. O'Neill looked down at his copy of the final form of the agreement. "I see nothing worth complaining about here. Though I don't plan to stay behind a desk most of the time either."

"Just make sure you write reports on your missions through the gate, Colonel," Woolsey said, using Jack's not entirely honorary, not entirely real 'rank'. "The President told me you have a history of taking far too long at that."

"Yeah, sure, youbetcha," Jack said dismissively, calm, self-assured and flippant. Woolsey let out an exasperated sigh.

"Good." Victoria read through the rest of the terms quickly, making sure it was all as they'd agreed - six more teams would be formed, four made up of mixed personnel, to go through the stargate. She could pick her own team, of course. Equal sharing of technology, and alien materials - naquadah, this metal Trinium that Teal'c had told them about, et cetera. The NCR would pay for their own food and supplies, beyond what they bought themselves via caravan. They wouldn't have to pay for bullets, not with the bullet forge here in the base, which was nice, because Victoria suspected they were going to be going through a lot of ammo, quickly. The NCR was going to get a good deal on what they did buy, though. And they might just pay in some of their share of the 'loot' from the Project itself.

The NCR didn't need every single staff weapon they found, after all, or the Zats. Just enough for testing, creating new ones, or at least some sort of knock-off using microfusion cells or something like that.

_Maybe it'll put the Van Graff energy weapons monopoly out of business for good._ Though the NCR would probably just hand the tech over to some magnate who was bought up with the right people.

So maybe not much of an improvement.

"So where are you planning on going first then, Miss Fernandez?" Woolsey asked, once they finally went through everything. "I understand Mr. Tea'lc provided a list of a dozen candidates based on our list from the..." He looked through the papers in front of him, "Abydos Cartouche?"

"He did. In between intel debriefings and teaching Arcade Goa'uld. We won't know if any of his intel is good until we check one, of course," Victoria frowned. "So we're still at every risk of walking into a trap."

"I thought you trusted the big guy," O'Neill leaned back in his chair, eying her carefully.

"I do. But verification never hurt anyone. I'd like to go for one of the Naquadah mines he identified, but those are some of the most well-defended planets. Mitchell recommended that we make sure we don't focus too much on one System Lord, which was a good point." That way they wouldn't risk creating too much attention for themselves from any one of the leading Goa'uld. "So we're going to be checking out a world called Viluntia."

Victoria shrugged, "According to Teal'c, it's a lightly defended world that is part of Apophis's domain, but he doesn't pay it much mind. But it'll have Jaffa guarding it we can take weapons and tech from, and perhaps more importantly, the planet produces a lot of food for Apophis's slave mines."

"Food? And it's lightly defended?"

"There's always more slaves available if some die of starvation," Victoria said. "According to Teal'c, Apophis has been stripping a lot of his outlying worlds bare for his war with Heru'ur, which includes Viluntia. We can hardly take the world from him, but we could disrupt his logistics, even a little, and get our hands on samples of offworld food, even goa'uld farming technology. Or 'magic', as Teal'c says. He doesn't know much about it, and I know less about farming, but the farmers over at Fort Carson said Teal'c might have been talking about some sort of fertilizer that ensures they food crops are plentiful and grow quickly."

"The NCR is always in need of more food, and I'm sure Cheyenne wouldn't say no to a way to improve yields." Woolsey said. "I see no problem with this mission."

"Neither do I." Hammond agreed. "I agree we can't afford to target any of the major depots of any of the system lords, or their Naquadah mines. So we'll do what we can, take what we can get, and gather intelligence."

"So basically: Raid, Ransack, Return, Rinse, Repeat?" Jack offered.

Victoria nodded after a moment, "That is one way to look at it, yeah." When he put it like that, sounded basically like her career between delivery jobs before Benny, and half of what she did in the Mojave - find a place that hadn't been picked clean, or that was occupied by raiders of one sort or another, and clear it out, then take everything she could as salvage for sale.

Basically, that was the Stargate Project on a larger scale, wasn't it?"

"Seems like the only way to look at it," O'Neill countered. "Not that I have a problem with it. Who am I to judge - I've done my fair share of plundering the people I kill in the field for supplies."

"But not for money or loot." Victoria guessed.

"If I wanted money, I wouldn't have signed on with the Rangers." O'Neill got up. "Alright, so if this little pow-wow is done, I want to have a talk with Teal'c as well. Got some questions for him. I assume you want to ask him some more details on Viluntia?"

"I do. Let's go see him together." Victoria looked to the other three, "Unless there's something else to discuss?" When no one said there was, Victoria took the opportunity to get out of dodge before they changed their mind, O'Neill right behind her, humming a cheery little tune as he too escaped paperwork and meeting hell.

**January 12th, 2283**

**Sublevel 25, Cheyenne Mountain**

**Teal'c's Quarters**

Though the CDV trusted Teal'c enough to let him on the surface to patrol with them, they were still concerned enough to keep one man outside his door, when he was there. Teal'c didn't mind, from what he told her - he wasn't actually not allowed to go anywhere, but they did want to keep an eye on him.

Perfectly understandable.

Nodding to the guard, Victoria went inside. Teal'c was seated on a man, meditating. She looked around. "No bed?"

She hadn't actually spoken to Teal'c in his quarters before.

"Jaffa do not sleep," Teal'c explained, opening his eyes and standing up quickly. "We Kelno'reem."

"That's a mouthful," O'Neill observed.

"It is a meditation ritual. It requires absolute focus and control." Teal'c explained. "How may I assist you, VictoriaFernandez?"

"Just want to run a few questions by you about Viluntia. And Colonel O'Neill wanted to meet you."

"Call me Jack," O'Neill insisted, holding out a hand. Teal'c, still not totally familiar with the gesture, accepted the handshake after a moment. He inclined his head in a small bow.

"An honor to meet you, O'Neill. You are one of the Rangers? Greatest warriors of the New California Republic?"

"Not that I want to toot my own horn, but..." O'Neill nodded. "And you're First Prime of Apophis. How do you get a fancy title like that? Deathmatch in a pit?"

"The First Prime of a Goa'uld must be the greatest warrior in their service. Any Jaffa of sufficient rank may challenge for the title, in honorable combat."

"Must be fun. Face a lot of challenges?"

"Only in my earliest time as First Prime." Teal'c nodded. "I have heard many tales about the prowess of your kin, O'Neill."

"Oh? Do tell."

"In a minute," Victoria held up a hand. "Yesterday, you told me that Viluntia's stargate only has a half-dozen guards. Even allowing for Apophis stripping the world bare for his war, that seems low. Food may not be naquadah, but his slaves and his Jaffa need to eat."

"The Stargate had six jaffa when last it was inspected, by the Third Prime less than a year ago. Apophis has not since drawn warriors from that world." Teal'c explained. "Most of Viluntia's garrison is otherwise occupied. The slaves manning the farms are restive, and wide-spread. They must be watched by many smaller units."

"Restive? Rebellious?"

"No. Such impudence would be punished brutally - once, long ago Viluntia was rebellious, and they were punished for their offenses. Much of the world's southern continent was burned from orbit, and the Stargate and the survivors were moved to the north. Apophis's underlord, So'tal, leads a ritual to remind the people of the price of rebellion. But many slaves flee the farms, moving to the hill country. Jaffa are occupied watching the rest and finding the escapees." Teal'c explained. "They are punished most gruesomely, by So'tal himself. He takes great pleasure in it."

Teal'c's voice had the slightest expression of disgust as he spoke of the man. After speaking with him more since she returned, Victoria had realized he was merely very good at schooling his emotions, than an expression as his manner of speech might seem.

"You called him without honor, yesterday."

"Even by the standards of the Goa'uld, So'tal is a liar and deceiver without peer or limit. And yet he is still able to fool former slaves into returning, with promises of amnesty." Teal'c explained, finally unclasping his hands from behind his back. "He uses words like daggers and poison, and when they return, they are punished, in the dungeons underneath his fortress. But word of their fate never spreads."

"Sounds like a real charmer," O'Neill added. "Hands on, I take it?"

"Almost all goa'uld enjoy causing pain 'hands on', as you say, RangerO'Neill," Teal'c answered.

"The farms are dispersed widely around the gate, in small settlements, because the farms take up a lot of space. Would the Jaffa have to walk - or march, or run - to the Gate to respond in case of attack?"

"They would ride."

"You didn't say they had vehicles there. Or ships. No death gliders either." She doubted Teal'c had lied to her, but left her wondering what he was talking about.

"They have horses. Many horses. On worlds such as this, where the Jaffa range far from the Stargate, Apophis has provided horses, from the stables of Epona," Teal'c explained.

"Animals? They rode animals?" Victoria's brow furrowed. "How - how the hell does that work? What's a horse anyway?"

"Four-legged animal." O'Neill explained, "Cowboys used to ride them all over this part of the country, couple centuries before the War." He gestured to Victoria's hat when he said 'cowboys'. Victoria eyes him. He shrugged, "Found a bunch of Old World books, cowboy stories. Fun adventurers."

Now that O'Neill mentioned them, Victoria vaguely remembered hearing about them. But she couldn't recall any details.

"Are horses dangerous? Teeth, claws? Hardened scales?" Victoria asked Teal'c.

"A horse trained for battle can be deadly, if one gets in range of it's hooves, or it's bite - their teeth are not sharp, but they are powerful enough to break skin. Those from Epona's stables, or descended from her breeds, can even break bone with a bite." Teal'c explained. "A horse can be a fearsome beast to tame, if wild-blooded enough. But most are not trained for battle - merely used for travel or beasts of burden, like your Brahmin. They will flee unless cornered, or their young threatened."

"Who is this 'Epona', then? You mentioned her twice."

"A minor Goa'uld once in service to Poseiden. When he rebelled against Ra and was defeated, she passed into Ra's service for a few centuries. After Ra's death, she has ruled her small domain, selling the horses and other animals she breeds to all System Lords. Many would seek to have exclusive control over her stock - but none would risk the wrath of all others by forcing it." Teal'c explained.

"Well, that's one way to stay free. Be too useful to too many to be invaded." House had tried that for a while. Hadn't lasted forever though. Idiot had insisted on believing she would ever be his minion. If he hadn't, she'd never have been able to get in and unplug him from his machine.

"So these horses are uh... common, out there? In space?" Victoria said hesitantly.

"On many worlds, yes." Teal'c said. He looked at her carefully. "You are nervous."

"I don't have the best experience with large animals, Teal'c. You've seen the surface. Apart from Brahmin and Bighorners, all the rest have always tried to eat me." Victoria admitted. "But they're not dangerous?" She wanted the assurance she wasn't going up against some sort of tame Yao-guai.

"Rarely, as I said."

Victoria let out a sigh. "Good. That's good." she said quickly. "So we shouldn't linger too long, but it might take a few hours for large number of reinforcements to arrive then?"

"A few. But not more. The horses of Epona's breeding are faster than any others. She uses a technology only she possesses to ensure they are." Some sort of advanced genetic engineering, presumably, like the Think Tank used to create Nightstalkers and Cazadores.

"Did she design it?"

"So she claims. But the Goa'uld are parasites. And there are those who came before the Goa'uld - I know not their names, but when their technology is found, Systems Lords will fight over it, to claim and steal it for their own."

"Do you know of any words where that technology is?" Victoria asked, mostly out of idle curiosity. The idea of having tech even the Goa'uld wanted was appealing.

"Only rumors. But they would always be well-guarded." Teal'c answered.

"So you're saying we _shouldn't_ be planning to visit?" O'Neill raised an eyebrow.

"It would be unwise," Teal'c confirmed.

"Well, we'll focus on just the one world at a time. Viluntia will be a good start. Hopefully we can even capture this So'tal alive." She doubted he'd be so willing to hand over intelligence, but she was also hoping he could be scared into spilling. Dangle him in front of a Deathclaw nest, maybe. If not, there were ways to trick someone into talking. Not one of her talents, interrogation. But others could do it.

"Most Goa'uld would rather live than die. Many defeated gods are brought into the service of their conquerors." Teal'c answered. "Apophis took great pleasure in bending his enemies to his will."

"Good." One way the Goa'uld were different from Caesar. He was petty and egomaniacal, but he understood the principle of death being just good enough for his enemies. But if they were used to being captured... She nodded to Teal'c. "Thank you. I'm sure you were expecting the chance to actually fight the Goa'uld directly when you defected. Rather than just... lots of talking. But hopefully you'll be able to join us after this mission."

"You seek to confirm my honor. It is...trying, but I understand," Teal'c said. "The challenge of facing the predatory creatures of your world is one worthy of the greatest of warriors."

"I heard you're planning on bagging a deathclaw, eh?" O'Neill chuckled.

"I have seen this fearsome beast from a distance, and it is said to be the deadliest beast of your world." Teal'c nodded. "Have you fought one, RangerO'Neill?"

"Not alone, and not by choice, but I've had to kill a few of the pesky lizards," O'Neill nodded. "Happy to share, if you can fill me in on Jaffa tactics."

"Of course." Teal'c looked to Victoria, and she nodded.

"You've answered my questions. I'll leave you to it." Victoria gave Teal'c a small, polite bow, and left.

**January 13th, 2283**

**Viluntia**

The Eyebot that they sent through first with a camera and the sensor arrays borrowed from the schematics in the SGC computers was shot down a minute later by the Jaffa guarding the gate - six, as promised by Teal'c, but no matter. They had more, and it could be repaired. What was important, now, was moving through before reinforcements could be called. Within seconds of the eyebot being shot down, Victoria was through, diving and dropping. The wave of disorientation she'd felt last time wasn't there now, thank god.

Staff blasts flew overhead as she rolled down the ramp leading up to the stargate. Jumping to her feet, Victoria fired off a full six rounds at two Jaffa, moving to take cover behind one of the large stone pillars surrounding the stargate.

The Gate was in the open, clear to ensure the free passage of cartload after cartload of food for Apophis's other worlds. She winged one Jaffa on the shoulder, but got the other on his neck. He may or may not have died from that yet, but he went down nonetheless. More staff blasts hit the pillar, exploding chunks out of it as she holstered her .357 and pulled out her .44. She also had several new guns, all brought with her from the Lucky 38 - Benny's gun, that he'd used to kill her and a pair of .45s.

Even as she'd taken cover and fired, the rest of the team came through the gate - O'Neill and Carter, both firing NCR service rifles, Sheppard with his gun, and then Arcade and Veronica right behind them. Arcade was wearing combat armor under his lab coat this time, and Victoria was wearing the same, though she'd only agreed under protest.

The shooting was over with quickly, six people versus six Jaffa, and those six were clearly not the cream of the crop. No injuries, thankfully, though a few grazing shots along the combat armor melted parts of it.

"We need to make something better than this for dealing with staff weapons," Veronica said, eyeing her damaged arm guard. "Mass producible, too, ideally."

"Sounds like a tall order." Sheppard commented, grabbing staff weapons and Zats from the fallen. "We can't carry all of these the whole way," he noted. There was nothing very close to the stargate, but according to Teal'c that too was by design. With the draw down of forces over years and years, So'tal had decided to limit what raiders through the Stargate could do.

_And there's supposed to be a flight of gliders stationed here, but they got stripped away and never replaced. _Victoria could guess the open space would have been perfect for bombardment attacks on gate-based raiders.

"Very. We should take some of the Jaffa armor, so we have more sets to test, too." Veronica agreed.

Carter was looking at the DHD, "countless supercomputers linked together to run the gate on Earth, and all it really needs is this." She crouched, poking around. After a moment, Victoria watched her pull a panel away from the device. "Holy Hannah," she murmured, looking at the internal circuitry of the thing, whatever it was. Victoria couldn't see from this angle. "I can't even begin to imagine how this works." She murmured, as much to herself as to them.

"We'll worry about it later, Carter," O'Neill cut in, tersely. "We've got work to do."

"Right, yes sir," Carter replaced the panel and straightened back up.

"According to Teal'c, that should be So'tal's fortress," Victoria pointed to a large, imposing tan-colored structure, looking like it was made of some sort of stone, off to the east, assuming her Pipboy had the orientation right. "Maybe fifteen minutes walk for us. A lot more guards than the stargate, and we have to assume they're on alert."

"Could mean we'll have some friendly company to greet us on the way then," O'Neill mused. "Either way, let's get moving."

"Colonel, what do we do with all this?" Sheppard gestured to the pile of staff weapons, Zats and pieces of Jaffa armor.

"Stash it by the gate, and we'll grab them on the way out. With the half-destroyed eyebot," Victoria suggested. She turned to Arcade, who was looking at the lines of goa'uld writing on the pillars. "Arcade, anything useful on there?"

"Prayers extolling the glory of Apophis, mostly," Arcade said. "I think, anyway." He snapped several pictures of the inscriptions. "And a few lines about So'tal's ever so slightly lesser glory." Arcade's tone dripped with sarcasm like only he could do it.

"Of course." Victoria chuckled.

"Twenty caps says this So Tall fellow is planning on betraying his boss first chance get gets," O'Neill offered. Everyone else looked at him. "Yeah, sucker's bet. Let's go."

He headed off first, taking the lead, and Victoria was right behind him. The road from the gate to the fortress was made of some sort of fused stone, as if it had been hit by nukes. Obviously that hadn't happened, given all the greenery around, but some sort of intense heat had melted the stones together.

They were only on the road for a few minutes when they heard some sort of... sound.

Victoria couldn't describe it - it was loud, getting louder, and repetative. Sort of a sharp sound, clicking against the stone.

It was coming closer.

"Off the road, now!" O'Neill shouted, and everyone scrambled to get off the road - but there wasn't much in the way of tree or undergrowth cover. Sheppard, Carter and O'Neill laid flat just below the rise of the road, but it wasn't exactly much in the way of cover. Victoria dropped into a crouch, Arcade and Veronica doing the same. Switching to one of the .45s, Victoria grabbed binoculars and looked ahead - but she didn't really need to, as it quickly became clear what was coming towards her.

Six more Jaffa, staff weapons in one hand, and the other hands... on some sort of ties, or leashes strapped to the elongated heads of the... _things_ they were riding. Four legs, each long, holding up a tall, long body, covered in fur. It was like no animal Victoria had ever seen, but she could only guess these were the horses.

They ate up the distance to them quickly, and as they drew close, the one at the lead shouted something and they all brought their staff weapons around, firing wildly, one handed - Victoria didn't even need to duck for nonexistent cover to avoid the blasts. She started shooting from the .45, dropping it and grabbing the next, everyone else starting to fire. The horses took several shots, proving to be quite hardy, moving rapidly making it hard to hit the, and bullets bouncing off the armor of the Jaffa. When they were within fifteen feet, the Jaffa jumped off their horses nearly in unison, dropped into crouches and their snake-head helmets all unfolded, covering their faces.

_Seems like we're going up against the competent Jaffa now. Fun._

Now it was a more traditional shootout, but without any cover, Victoria found herself moving, quickly, not really getting much of a chance to aim as she fired. "Veronica, flank them!" She tried to shout over the sound of the shooting as she dove under another blast. One Jaffa went down after a hail of bullets from Sheppard - and then another went down, as O'Neill fired a hunting rifle from close range right at one of the eyepieces, smashing through and downing the man, the bullet no doubt in his brain.

Shooting blindly before jumping up and moving again, Victoria felt heat and pain flash across her side as a grazing shot hit her, some of it bleeding through the armor, but not enough to make her stop - but it did make her stumble.

"FUCK!" Victoria switched to Benny's 'Maria' pistol, the first she could reach and fired off more shots, hearing them all plink off the armor. _Fuck fuck fuck fuck..._

Diving off the road and rolling down the slight rise it was on, Victoria cursed again and then heard the sound of a loud shout - surprise as much as anything else, it sounded like - and then a loud thud, as a Jaffa landed with a thud after flying off the road.

Veronica.

The former scribe, power-fist on hand was now in hand to hand combat with another Jaffa, who was trying to use his staff to hit her hard, but unable to land a solid blow, while she was trying to get an equally solid blow on him.

The single combat actually drew the attention of the other Jaffa still standing for a moment, and that was all the rest of them needed.

Another hail of bullets later, the Jaffa were down. No way to carry all this loot, but Veronica, odly enough, helped herself to one of the staff weapons, and they all took the Zats - three this time only - and two Tok'kal grenades. As well as what looked like some sort of more conventional grenade. _Test those somewhere safe._

The horses were standing there, with some sort of strange harness attached to a long leather... thing on the creature's back. It was kind of shaped like... a seat. And it was in the right place.

"So this is a horse." O'Neill commented, looking it over with a somewhat apprasing eye. "I'd love to take one back to Earth with us."

"It's odd the Goa'uld would use these, rather than some sort of vehicle. Maybe some sort of motorcycle or something." Carter observed as she moved to stand near them. "But I don't think we could take it back. Even if we could get it to the surface, I don't think the ambient radiation there would be very good for it."

"Of course not," O'Neill might have sounded a little disappointed.

"Well, they're in our way, so unless we can get them to move..." Victoria said, approaching one, slowly, carefully. It made no sudden moves to attack her, which put it head and shoulders over most animals she'd seen - even literally, given its size.

As she drew close though, suddenly the horse let out a loud sound that could only be called an aggressive whine, reared up on its hind legs and tried to lash at her with its front legs. Victoria barely jumped back in time, landing on her ass, hard.

"_Madre de dios!_" Victoria swore, scooting backwards out of the reach of the creature as he reared again - and then Veronica was there, driving her power fist into the horse's neck, the force of the blow enough to snap the creature's bones. It crumple sideways. The other horses bolted, away from them, apparently smart enough to have self-preservation, at least.

"Teal'c did warn you," O'Neill, "Pride goeth, and all that." He still extended her a hand and helped her up.

"Yeah, yeah, fine. At least the rest of the horses are gone." Victoria officially **did not like** these things. She made a note to just start shooting the rest.

"It's a pity this one was aggressive," Veronica mused. "It was kind of pretty."

"Pretty!?" Victoria raised an eyebrow. "What the hell, Veronica? It's big and bulky and... ugly."

"But it has such soft, sleek fur. Shiny too," Veronica gestured. "Look!" Victoria looked, but she didn't see it. Sure, the fur was sleep and shiny looking, but she didn't see how that made it pretty. "Don't see it?"

"Not even remotely."

"Hardly looking, strong. Large. Very large. Teal'c said these were bred with genetic engineering?" Arcade noted. He crouched by one of the dead jaffa and pulled an elaborate wristband-thing off his arm.

"He implied it. Said this Epona person had special technology to make her horses better than anyone else's, so their descendents would be stronger. What's that?" She nodded to the thing he pulled off.

"I think it's some sort of communication device, if I'm reading these symbols right, which is a big if," Arcade stuffed it into a pocket. "We can worry about that later."

"Right. We Still have to get to the fortress." It was still there, in the distance, and if there were more Jaffa on the way to the Stargate, they might have more enemies between now and there.

**January 13th, 2283**

**So'tal's Fortress, Viluntia**

They didn't face more Jaffa on the way to the fortress, passing several farms full of lush trees and crops bearing fruits or whatever else Victoria couldn't identify - samples dutifully taken, the locals apparently hiding from the band of well-armed strangers, judging by furtive glances from inside wooden shacks and huts and a few houses made of stone or what might have been primitive brick. Under other circumstances, Victoria would have wanted to speak with these people, but they were on a clock.

Unfortunately, as they drew close to the fortress, a cluster of stone buildings between them and the structure itself, they could see that it was on alert.

This was expected, but annoying.

Unfortunately, the fortress had been built well - the cluster of stone buildings didn't get too close to it, leaving a clear space all around it. There was an escape route, Teal'c knew, but it was inaccessible from the outside, and he didn't know exactly where it let out anyway. Good for leaving, not for entering.

The entrance to the fortress was sealed, closed up, but there were a number of windows on the upper levels, each one facing them and the structures with a Jaffa waiting, staff weapon poised.

_I'd be more scared of those things didn't have the accuracy of a shotgun._ But still.

The stone buildings looked like a local center for the farmers - shops maybe, judging by the collection of random, primitive looking items. Another place might be a bar. Probably only for favored farmers, or maybe Jaffa. Victoria made a note to ask Teal'c about that.

"Okay, Courier, got a plan for how we get in? Teal'c have anything interesting to say?" O'Neill asked skeptically.

"There's no way we could have come through the stargate without alerting people." Victoria defended herself.

The shops and inns had been emptied out by their arrival. To get out of the line of fire from those inaccurate staff weapons, Victoria ducked inside the inn, and the rest of them followed her.

"I repeat myself: How do we get in? Front door's locked, and I forgot my keys in my other pants," O'Neill demanded. "Also, new rule," he hissed, seemingly for dramatic effect as for any need to not be overheard, "no hiding the plan!" He gesticulated a bit with his hands, almost as if grabbing and shaking something.

"The door's locked. Whatever shall we do?" Victoria mock-pouted. She nodded to Sheppard, and the CDV Captain pulled four small bricks of C4 out of his pack, along with detonators. She'd been shocked Cheyenne had C4 after all these years, but it turned out, they knew how to make it. It was expensive for them to make, requiring hard to get or hard to make chemicals, and form what Hammond had said, it just wasn't as good as the pre-war stuff. The last of that had been used when he'd just been a new Private in the CDV.

Still, even this knockoff stuff should be good enough to blow ahole in the door. Sheppard had brought more bricks if needed.

"Is that-?" O'Neill asked.

"C-4? It is at that. We just need to get to the door, and then kaboom," Sheppard nodded.

"Just get to the door." O'Neill deadpanned. "It'll be a walk in the meadow."

"I'll go," Veronica offered. Victoria tensed a moment, the possibility of Victoria getting hurt not a pleasant thought, but she also knew that Victoria was the fastest person here - and she had even more experience dodging enemy fire than Victoria did, given her preference for closing in with her power fists.

"How many do you think the door will need?" Arcade looked to Sheppard, since he was presumably the expert.

"No idea. The blast doors inside Cheyenne Mountain - built to handle explosions - take three of this kind of C4 to make a hole big enough to move through if you stoop. I don't know what the doors are like," Sheppard shrugged.

"I asked Teal'c about that, when he warned me this would happen. Apparently the Goa'uld answer to this problem would be to bring in bombers from orbit or some sort of heavy staff weapon through the gate - carry it in pieces, set it up and fire." Victoria had been stunned at that, but apparently the Goa'uld just didn't like a lot of variety in terms of how to get through sealed doors. "Their solutions to most problems is overkill. To be safe, I think we should use these four, but I think we might only need two. Or less. Impossible to say without testing."

"Let's test it out then," Jack suggested, sounding like he looked forward to it. He looked to Veronica, "We'll cover you - not that you really need it against Jaffa."

"Just stick these to the door and run back here." Sheppard handed her the small blocks of explosive. "Not too close together, but close enough to supplement eachother," he explained.

"Just don't push the button until I'm back," Veronica said. "Or else I might think you don't like me." She grinned, before stepping outside. Everyone else followed suit, and the Jaffa all raised their weapons, readying them for attack. But they were smart enough not to fire yet.

O'Neill made a few quick gestures, to a blank expression from Veronica and everyone else there that wasn't Carter. "Right," He muttered, seemingly as much at himself as anyone else. "On my mark," He ordered quietly. "Suppressing fire - don't bother aiming." He added.

"Not exactly something I'm very familiar with," Victoria countered, though she pulled out the .45 autos and made sure both were fully loaded.

"Well, won't it just be thrilling to know it's not very hard, Courier," O'Neill replied. "Promise I won't tell anyone that you actually missed."

"I've missed plenty of times before." Mostly before VATS, but still. "I just make sure I fire the last shot in the firefight."

"Good philosophy," O'Neill agreed. He turned to Veronica, who had the C-4 in hand, each of the four pieces with a small explosive charge attached now, ready to go when Sheppard pressed the detonator. "Ready?"

Veronica nodded.

"Run there, place the C-4, run back. Comprehend?"

Veronica rolled her eyes, "I think I can manage."

"I'd have worried if you couldn't." O'Neill replied, deadpan. Veronica chuckled lightly, then turned, moving one leg back a bit, bracing herself to run.

"On my mark," O'Neill said slowly. Victoria readied one gun, aiming upwards at the windows, not specifically aiming at any Jaffa. Ten windows, ten jaffa. From what Teal'c said, there should only be about twenty jaffa stationed at the place at any given time. At most. If the other six were from here, which made sense, then they should only have fourteen left. Easy enough to deal with.

'..rk!' Victoria nearly missed the command, but heard the last bit, and started firing maybe a second after Carter and Sheppard joined their fire to O'Neill's. Though the CDV was not the NCR, the military training those three had showed as they shot the suppressive fire, carefully controlled sprays along the windows.

Arcade was just sort of firing wildly up at the windows, not landing any hits as far as she could tell, though she had to admit she was trying vary hard not to pay close attention. Instead, she just started firing, switched to the next when she was out of bullets, then reloaded both as quickly as she could, slamming fresh clips in and firing some more. Without needing to aim, without taking any care as long as she shot 'up', she could pull the trigger quickly.

Finally, Veronica was there, and back again, looking unharmed. Several of the windows were empty, but it was hard to say if the Jaffa were dead, or just showing enough brains to take some cover. O'Neill shouted for them to cease fire, and they did. Victoria grabbed Arcade's arm and tugged him back with her as they all moved a bit more out of range.

"Fire in the hole," Sheppard observed, "Look away, cover your ears," then pressed the detonator. For a split second, nothing, and then an explosion, loud enough to ring in Victoria's ears even from this distance, a blast of fire spurting out of the door and the ground shaking just a little. But though the light flashed in the corner of her vision, at least it didn't damage her eyesight.

When they turned back, there was a gaping hole, and one of the Jaffa at the window was shouting 'Kree!' as he pulled back inside. The door was blasted open, as well as a big chunk of the wall as well. _Looks like four was overkill indeed. _Any more gone, and she might have worried about the structure integrity of the structure just a little.

"They seem to be a bit riled up," O'Neill observed.

"Well, It would be rude to keep them waiting," Victoria pointed out. "Let's go."


	10. Catch, No Release

**Disclaimer:** Don't own Stargate or Fallout, obviously.

I wasn't particularly blocked with this chapter, but rather I just had a pressing writing obligation fill up a slot before this one, for my writing schedule. It's a long and boring story. Regardless, on with the chapter.

Just because a character draws a conclusion does not mean I believe that conclusion to be correct.

Wasteland Gate

By Kylia

Chapter 10: Catch, No Release

**January 13, 2283**

**So'tal Fortress, Viluntia**

The atrium of the fortress was, much like the tunnels of Heru'ur's base, lined with gold and covered in more goa'uld script. It was probably just more gold leaf or whatever, like before, but Victoria really had to wonder why it was that Goa'uld structures, on the inside, had to look like they were vomited on by a...

Thing that vomited gold.

_Okay, that started better than it ended._

"More praise of Apophis and So'tal?" Victoria turned to Arcade, gesturing at the writings.

"Looks like it. Also something that claims to be the history of the planet, I think," Arcade said, as he stopped to look closely at a section of wall. He snapped several pictures, "Note to self, bring more film next time." He muttered.

"Where's the welcoming party?" Sheppard asked, looking around. There was no one there. The room had three other ways out, apart from the door they'd blasted open. One, large archway at the far end, and a smaller door on either side. The room had several pillars, and even as he spoke, Sheppard got behind one, peeking around for any sign the enemy Jaffa were coming.

"Probably on their way. Or setting up somewhere further inside." Victoria suggested.

"Could be planning a big surprise party for us." Jack suggested, stepping close to one of the side doors and quickly peeking around it, then pulling back and shaking his head. Victoria moved to the other side door, standing on one side of the doorway. She was about to peek around it when she hesitated.

_No. Better idea._ Victoria took one of the Tok'kal knockout grenades they'd taken and rolled it down the hallway, without turning it on. But as it rolled, there was the sudden sound of footsteps running away from it... only for them to stop when it didn't go off at all.

"Yep, there they are. Cover me." Victoria pulled out her revolvers again, and charged into the hallway. Jaffa - no covering serpent helmets on these ones - were indeed taking up positions at the intersection ahead, but as they fired from their staff weapons, Victoria dropped to one knee and fired at one, getting him in the head. The other Jaffa started to reposition, but before he could pull it off, a hail of bullets connected with his torso armor, throwing him off, and then another spray got him again, and this time he fell back, enough of the bullets getting through the armor to take him down.

Victoria spared a quick glance behind her. Carter and O'Neill were both there. She nodded, and approached the two downed Jaffa, grabbing their staff weapons and the Zat'nik'tel that one of them had, quickly taking them back into the throne room with her. Without bothering to consult with the others - there really wasn't time for debate now. Two down, twelve to go, but there would be reinforcements from the rest of the planet on their way. From what Teal'c said, it would take time for them to get here, spread out as they were, and they might come piecemeal, but even if they could hole up and defend this fortress, sooner or later, they'd run out of ammo and besides which, they needed to get back to the Stargate, ideally with a prisoner, once they were done here.

So they couldn't get pinned down.

If Victoria knew anything about egotistical, arrogant would-be gods, then just beyond this grand entrance hall would be an even grander throne room. So'tal may rule on behalf of Apophis, but he still pretended to be a god, even if one in service to another god.

Given how well-appointed Caesar's tent had been compared to the rest of Fortification Hill, Victoria had always figured that his palace in Flagstaff would be even more grand.

Probably had nothing on this. In both glamour and tackiness.

The larger doorway at the far end of the entrance hall actually had doors in it, rather than standing free and open like the others. The doors, like the walls, looked like they were made of gold, and there didn't appear to be any lock on them.

Without knowing what to look for, Victoria couldn't see any signs of any traps on the door, but it did seem unlikely this door would have some sort of mine attached to it or whatever. She pushed at both doors, and they slid easily inward, swinging open under their own momentum after a few moments.

Sure enough, in the next room was a throne room, just as golden, with braziers burning all along the walls, and stone statues of snake-headed people, with gemstones in their eye sockets flanking a pathway from the door to a raised dais, where a throne did in fact sit.

The throne, gold-seeming like the rest of the room, had dark red cloth and cushions on it, and seated on those cushions was a man in long, white flowing robes, a golden circlet on his head, and some sort of fancy bracelet on one hand, that had weird rings attached to both

_Is that..._ Teal'c had mentioned the kara kesh, a device worn on the hand that Goa'uld used to inflict pain, or raise personal shields or send out blasts of energy. Victoria couldn't remember his exact description, but the bracelet looked like her vague memory of his details on the device's appearance.

The man had tanned, no, olive skin, surprisingly close to her own skin tone, and his head had been shaved bald. He sat, perched on the throne like a predator eying his prey.

Kneeling on either side of the throne were two women - young, pretty, wearing what Victoria could only say looked like underwear made of gold, jewels and maybe a bit of cloth to hold it all together.

_Oh for fucks sake._ Even Caesar didn't go so far as to have pet concubines by his throne.

"Humans," the man said, his voice deep, unnaturally so. His eyes glowed for a moment as the other five formed up behind her. "I would ask what god you serve, but you do not use the weapons of the Goa'uld."

"No, no we don't. Though I do have to say they're pretty nifty weapons." O'Neill commented. "Though your staff weapons have pretty terrible aim and rate of fire." He pointed his service rifle at So'tal. "I don't suppose telling you to surrender would get anywhere?"

"And who would I be surrendering to?" So'tal asked, chuckling darkly. "You invade my world, and my home, and yet you have yet to name yourselves." _well, someone is trying a pretty obvious stall tactic._

Victoria started to walk into the throne room, gesturing for the others to follow her. O'Neill caught her eye, and jerked his head towards the entrance hall, raising an eyebrow.

Hoping she was guessing his implication correctly, Victoria nodded. If she was So'tal, she'd be stalling for her Jaffa to come in behind. Especially if that bracelet really could raise some sort of personal shield he could use to defend himself. But if they got fully inside the throne room, they'd have a better position, then standing in the doorway, exposed.

"Last I checked, this was Apophis's world, you just ran it for him," Victoria pointed out, smirking.

"I hold this world in service to a God greater than myself, yes," So'tal acknowledged, and it almost looked like it pained him to acknowledge it, though acknowledge it he did. "Apophis, Rightful Supreme System Lord and Rightful Lord of the Goa'uld Domain. I ask again - who are you and why do you tread on his world?"

"We were thinking of coming in, stealing a few things, ransacking the place." O'Neill suggested, stepping forward. He lifted the Zat'nik'tel Victoria from the two earlier Jaffa and fired it at So'tal. Unsurprisingly, even as the Ranger fired, So'tal held his bare hand over the bracelet, and a shimmering field of golden energy formed around him, blocking the energy of the Zat.

"Well, had to try it," O'Neill shrugged.

"You dare attack a god?!" So'tal demanded, eyes glowing again. He brandished his braceleted hand, and Victoria grabbed O'Neill and dove aside, pulling him down with her.

A wave of energy blasted right where they had just been, the edge catching one of the statues and knocking it's arms clean off.

"You're not the first self-proclaimed god I've run into. He didn't end very well either," Victoria said, pulling herself to her feet. "As for who I am, you can call me Courier." That was the name everyone back home knew her by, might as well stick with it out here.

"Colonel Jack O'Neill, NCR Ranger," Jack introduced himself. "Howdy,"

"Your insolence will not be long for the world. Jaffa! _Kree_!" Stepping into view on the Entrance hall were indeed a dozen Jaffa. So'tal sat back down on his throne. The two concubines had stayed almost perfectly still during thole whole exchange, but it was hard to say if they were just brave, or afraid of what would happen if they moved from their positions.

"Kill these interlopers!" He ordered his Jaffa.

Victoria had been avoiding using VATS, but now was one of those times to make use of it. Once more, time seemed to slow as her Pipboy accelerated her reactions, her brain processing everything faster for a few split seconds, which was all she needed. She lined up three shots, one after another, fired, aiming for the heads of the Jaffa. With the fractions of time left, Victoria dove to the right again, and then the world started moving once more. The sound of bullets and staff blasts as everyone took up positions behind cover. Even the Jaffa quickly ducked behind pillars and corners, and the firefight was on.

For a minute, there was only one more casualty on the Jaffa side, as well as a grazing shot by a staff blast that got Sheppard in the side. The soldier fell back, staggering, hand on his side, which came away with blood, but he didn't look _that_ bad, all things said and done. Victoria saw him pull out a stimpack and inject it, but she didn't - couldn't - pay too much attention, because that's when So'tal decided to join the fight again. He sent out another wave of energy - and Victoria caught the blast, which sent her flying into the wall. She had just barely enough time to tuck her head under her arm so she didn't hit that into the wall, but nonetheless, pain bloomed through as she hit the wall, dropping to the ground.

"Fuck," She muttered, groaning. Nothing felt broken, but there was only so much her armor could do against that much force, however blunt.

But more importantly, it had taken her entirely out cover, and several staff blasts came her way - one landing just above her head, and another where she was had she not rolled to the side, the gesture barely enough, and the heat from the blast felt like standing too close to a fire. She bit her lip to stop from crying out in pain, then rolled again, with a bit more force, getting out of angle from the doorway.

But So'tal wasn't done. He sent out another blast that caught Arcade and Veronica and sent them sprawling, but at least her own fate had given them enough warning to evade worst of it and not fly into a wall.

Groaning, Victoria pulled herself to her feet. Frustrated, she fired off three more shots from her .357 at So'tal, each one completely failing to connect with the man, his shielding proving to be far too effective.

So'tal turned back to face her as she shot, and then fired off another blast of energy, but she was already moving, running to Veronica's side. She helped her up, then pulled Arade to his feet, and the three of them took cover behind a pillar.

"Either of you two have any idea how we get past that shield?" Victoria had to raise her voice just to be heard over the sounds of the shooting. "As long as he's there blasting us, it'll be hard to finish off the Jaffa."

"It doesn't work like any repulsion device I've ever heard of," Arcade said first.

"No, it doesn't," Veronica agreed. "But it's alien, so that's not surprising." Victoria nodded, then she pulled her .44, turned around and fired off three quick shots at the Jaffa, hitting one in the shoulder once, sending him spinning back a bit and then watched him take blasts from Carter and Sheppard.

So'tal sent out another blast, but O'Neill was on the move before it hit him, and instead a statue broke in half and the top half went flying into the entrance hall.

"Yeah, well, short of shooting him a lot, I don't really have a solution, so...?"

"Well, I don't think any amount of shooting will get past that," Veronica said quickly. "I'm going to try punching him. Cover me."

"Veronica wait-" Victoria started, but Veronica was already on the move - and thus exposing herself to fire from the Jaffa and blasts from So'tal. _Veronica, if bullets don't work, why would punching work any better!?_

"Keep shooting at the Jaffa. I'll run interference!" Victoria said quickly, pulling out her .45s again and jumping back out of cover, firing at So'tal again, catching his attention, She ran towards him, diving to the left and rolling as the gem in the bracelet glowed and sent out another blast, then getting back up and shooting again.

"If you want to know who we are," She shouted at So'tal, "Think Phantom Godslayers!" So'tal's eyes widened at that for a moment - just a moment - and Victoria kept firing.

"No! You are not them. You do not use their weapons, nor their armor!" So'tal shouted, sounding almost afraid.

"No, but I'm not sure we need them," Veronica said, charging the short distance to So'tal and driving her fist towards him - Victoria watched, stunned as her power-fisted hand actually passed through his shield and got him right in the side, sending him reeling. He staggered, tried to grab at Veronica's wrist, but Victoria started shooting again, catching his attention as Veronica pulled her hand back, then punched again, this time getting him in the stomach. He doubled over, wheezing, and Veronica grabbed his arm, ripping the kara kesh off his hand quickly. And in the process, breaking at least one finger.

Victoria couldn't bring herself to care, somehow.

The two women that had been managing to bravely - or perhaps not - stay by So'tal's throne through the firefight both reacted to Veronica's arrival. The one further from the former scribe fell back, flat on her ass, and then she half-crawled backwards, pulling away from her. The one closer to Veronica just dropped away from the throne and started pleading for her life. Or at least, that's what Victoria presumed she was saying - between her fearful sobs and soft screams of terror and the sound of the ongoing fighting behind Victoria, it was hard to make out words.

But the tears and her posture suggested pleas, at the very least.

"YOU DARE?!" So'tal snarled, and he lashed out at Veronica with his free hand, catching her in the chest - the combat armor actually _dented_ a little under the force, just a touch, and it sent Veronica reeling backwards a pace - but Veronica didn't let go of the arm she'd had a grip on, and she punched his side again, letting him go and watching him fall back. So'tal snarled.

"I am your **god**, human!" So'tal intoned, eyes flashing and his voice even deeper than before. "You should be _kneeling!_"

"You know, it's a lot less impressive after hearing that from so many legionaries," Veronica quipped, then punched him again - or tried to. So'tal proved to be a tougher customer, dodging the blow that should have broken his nose and knocked a few teeth out, catching it on his shoulder as he tried to punch at Veronica again.

But Veronica dodged that punch this time around, and just punched again - and again. The second one managed to land a blow, hitting his chest, and probably fracturing a few ribs from the way. But she left herself open to another punch from him, and this time he managed to get her in the arm, sending her staggering back even as she sent him sprawling to the floor.

"Veronica!" Victoria started to run to the scribe, but the delay in focusing on her let So'tal start to climb to his feet and kick Victoria off her own, sending _her_ sprawling on the ground. "Oh, fuck you, _pedejo!_" Victoria pointed her gun at him and fired twice, getting him in the shoulder with one and missing with the other. That seemed to be enough to take him down for the count for the moment, as he fell back.

Victoria clambered to her feet, wincing in pain as her calves screamed in protest. _Fuck_. He really hit her legs hard, but at least they weren't broken. She didn't quite limp, but it was close as she hurried as much as she could over to Veronica.

"I think he might have actually fractured my upper arm," Veronica said in wonderment as she cradled her injured arm with her power-fisted one. "He could he punch like that? Without a power fist?" She looked down at the dentin her combat armor.

"He's an alien. I'm sure it makes sense." Victoria dismissed. She pulled out a stimpack - it wouldn't handle the fracture immediately, but it would speed the process up and handle the worst of the pain, probably. Without being as bad for the body as other options.

"So how did you know that punching him through the shield would work?" Victoria asked went on as she injected the stimpack into the muscle around the fractured bones. The shooting continued, but it was slower, less intense, and it sounded like the Jaffa might be firing Zats instead of staff weapons now. Better chance to aim, easier to shoot from cover.

_What do you know, some Jaffa have brains._ Well, that had been established already, but it did seem like a lot of these incubator-soldier-slaves didn't really have the tactical sense that god gave a legionary. _I mean, the Legion may have had "throw men at the problem because we have reserves" as a strategy, but at least that was a conscious choice. I'm not sure that's what's going on with these guys._

"I didn't," Veronica admitted with some hesitation. "I just... figured it was worth a try."

Victoria blinked, "So... you charged in. To punch the guy with the energy shield. On a whim?" Despite the sarcastic words, she couldn't help but smile a little as she shook her head.

"Shooting him wasn't working, and - well, the shield wasn't drawing on a full sized power source. Alien technology or not, there's only so much power you can put into a shield you fit into a bracelet." Veronica explained. "I didn't think it would get right through his shield entirely, just weaken it faster."

Victoria raised an eyebrow as she stepped back from Veronica and walked over to So'tal. The man was bleeding from the injury in his shoulder, and taking shallow breaths, trying to get up. Victoria put a foot on his chest, pointing her gun at his head.

"Next one goes in your skull," She explained, smiling. "Go ahead. Try me." She looked over at Veronica for a moment. "So why did you think the punch would do more?" She was curious about Veronica's thought process, but also, she wanted to see Veronica geek out a bit over technology and science. It was always adorable.

Veronica shrugged, "When it comes to a repulsion field blocking incoming solid objects, it doesn't really matter how fast the object comes in, in a lot of ways. Once you're blocking incoming solid objects, you're blocking incoming solid objects. It's more complicated than that, but..." she shook her head, "what matters more is the area impacted. The more energy the barrier needs to expend to hold a larger area, the faster it's sapped." Veronica shrugged, "It doesn't usually matter in the case of standard repulsion fields because they have normal generators to keep them going for extended periods of time."

So'tal, despite his injuries, laughed, "Fools of the Tau'ri, to think you understand the higher magics of the Goa'uld so easily."

"Magic, schmagic, this is technology, and if it's technology, sooner or later, we can reproduce it," Victoria said blithely. Which was theoretically true, but not _actually_ true in practice. Not yet. Not with the limited industrial base Cheyenne had, and even with the NCR's resources and capacity.

Still. Bravado worked in a pinch. She reached down and grabbed So'tal's injured hand, ignoring his cry of pain as she 'accidentally' grabbed his broken finger as well, and pulled him to his feet, holding her gun to his head. "Tell your Jaffa to stand down." She took this opportunity to look at the fight.

Carter, Arcade, Sheppard and O'Neill had all taken a few grazing shots from the staff weapons, it looked like, but no one was down for the count, and no one seemed as though they'd been hit by the Zats.

So'tal inhaled sharply, then hesitated for a moment. Victoria pushed the gun against his temple harder, finger squeezing on the trigger. "You're strong, you're fast," she told him. "Are you faster than my trigger finger? We might not be the Phantom Godslayers, but we can slay a god just as well as they can."

"You are meddling in matters far beyond your ability to understand, human," So'tal muttered, then he raised his voice, "Jaffa! _Kree!"_ The Jaffa that were left - all three of them - lowered their weapons.

"Tell them to put their weapons down, and leave." She added. Hopefully, O'Neill at least wouldn't be stupid enough to let them walk away, surrendered or not. Rangers had no qualms about attacking the enemy from behind.

_Arcade wouldn't. _But these Jaffa couldn't be allowed to just walk away.

"And what happens to me when they leave?" So'tal asked. "Slay me now, if you will." There was no waver in his tone, but there was something about the grand way he told her to kill him that made Victoria think he was being less than genuine about his desire to be killed.

Bravado, in other words.

"You're our prisoner, as long as you don't try to escape and as long as you cooperate. You'll be coming back through the Stargate with us." Victoria made a note to make sure that his eyes were covered when they dialed Earth. It might be a futile gesture - Teal'c hadn't suggested that anyone knew the origin of the Phantom Godslayers, but still.

So'tal chuckled, "I will tell you nothing of the secrets of the Goa'uld, human. But take me prisoner, if you think you can hold me."

"I'm sure we can," Victoria said with certainty. "Give the order," she squeezed the trigger just shy of firing again.

So'tal barked orders in Goa'uld, and as the Jaffa, reluctantly lowered their weapons to the ground slowly, Victoria turned to Arcade, raising an eyebrow.

"He told them to leave, and return with their fellows. I think." Arcade said after a moment. "A lot of the words he used have multiple meanings."

Victoria rolled her eyes. "So much for you _walking_ back to the Stargate." Victoria pulled her pistol from his head, flipped it around in her hand so she was holding the barrel, and smashed the handle against his head, watching his eyes roll back into his head moments later as he slumped in her grip. She let go of his hand and let him fall to the ground. O'Neill took that as a sign to shoot the Jaffa walking away in the back, and after he started shooting, Carter followed his lead, though she didn't look totally thrilled about it.

Arcade, on the other hand, looked _furious!_ "What the hell was that?!"

O'Neill turned around, lowering his service rifle. "Damage control. You heard what he said - hell, you _translated_ what he said. He was sending them to bring more Jaffa here."

"They were unarmed! They were walking away! They'd surrendered!" Arcade countered, walking up to the Colonel, glaring at him.

"Which just made it easier to shoot them. This isn't a bar fight, Arcade. It's war. You know, the thing people die in? You think the Jaffa would have cared if we walking away?" All humor was gone from O'Neill's voice - just deadly flatness. A man who'd fought countless skirmishes and battles, killed dozens and hundreds as a Ranger of the NCR.

"That doesn't make it -" Arcade cut himself off, clearly realizing he was going to get nowhere with him. "This is why the Followers broke with the NCR."

"And here I was thinking it was because you just didn't like our hats." O'Neill drawled, quipping once more.

"Sir, the Articles of War-" Carter started to protest.

"Don't exactly apply here, Carter. If we'd taken them prisoner, or they had actually surrendered, you might have a point. But they certainly had every intention of fighting us again when they came back around." O'Neill countered. Carter slowly nodded, then snapped off a salute that seemed to be falling back on formality as a means of registering just how much she disagreed with his orders, while staying respectful.

"What did I say about saluting me, Captain?"

"Not to do it, sir," Carter replied.

"And yet you are. It's like I'm not the Colonel or something."

"Technically sir, you're not." Carter pointed out. "Or rather, you're only a Colonel technically, I suppose would be more accurate."

"The point is, Captain Carter, I'm supposed to be in charge. So if I tell you not to salute me, don't. Bad enough you're calling me sir."

"Yes sir," Carter said, smiling a little. O'Neill just grumbled, muttering something under his breath.

Arcade walked over to her and Veronica. "Are we just going to let -"

"Well, it already happened," Victoria pointed out. "And I get that you don't like it, but the fact is-"

"Are you _defending_ what he did?" Arcade glared at her now.

"Sometimes you have to kill someone, unarmed or not. I killed an unarmed and defenseless man when I shot Caesar in the head!" Victoria pointed out.

"That's hardly the same thing!" Arcade countered. "And you still shouldn't have done that, you know. All it did was deify him. The Legion's fragments worship him even harder than they did before. If you'd just let him die naturally - or let him take the blame for Second Hoover Dam-"

"The Legion would still be intact." Victoria countered. "Weakened, maybe he'd have to fight some rebellions or even a few mutinies, but he'd have blamed it all on Lanius the way he blamed the first one on Graham."

"That's -" Arcade started, then he shook his head. "Maybe you're right, but just... casually murdering unarmed enemies isn't okay!"

"If they'd actually surrendered, yeah, but like O'Neill said - you heard what So'tal ordered them to do."

"Then they'd have come back and we could have killed them then. Just doing the expedient thing is exactly the sort of logic that led to the Enclave and... everything they did." He shook his head. "Victoria, he who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster."

"Who's that from?" Victoria asked, curious which pre-war thinker he was quoting there.

"Nietzsche. Not his biggest fan, really, but he makes more than a few good points anyway. The Goa'uld might be worse than the Legion, and larger, but the Jaffa are still just slaves. Once you start getting into the habit of thinking that these Jaffa are the enemy as much as... he is," he gestured to So'tal, "well, you shouldn't."

"I hate to break up this conversation, but how much time do you think we have until we need to head back to the Stargate?" Sheppard asked, reloading and then lowering his weapon.

"Not enough. But we need to keep moving. I'll stay here with So Tall," O'Neill observed. "Sheppard too. Ganon, Santangelo, Courier - you go with Carter. See what we can find in here that's useful."

Sending Carter, Arcade and Veronica together made sense - the three people that would have the best idea what was useful, between Carter and Veronica's technical knowledge and Arcade's translating - limited though it might be.

"You're not in charge of this little expedition, you know." Victoria felt compelled to add, but that didn't stop her from nodding to Arcade and Veronica - not in charge or not, O'Neill had made a good suggestion.

"Doesn't make you in charge either, Vicky. We really should figure that out at some point. But I suppose now just isn't the time."

"No, probably not." Victoria nodded, then she looked at So'tal's throne. "If I was a megalomaniacal wannabe god, I wouldn't keep all the best stuff out in the open." She started feeling along the edge of the throne, ignoring the panicked whimpers from So'tal's slave girls. She would have preferred to liberate them and bring them with her, but she didn't really have time. But while she was bothering with the throne, trying to find a hidden switch or compartment or something, Victoria heard Veronica walk over to the girls, and try to talk to them. They both gasped in fear, and Victoria heard them scramble away.

"Arcade, can you give me some help here?" Veronica asked, and Victoria kept searching.

"Trying to find a hidden switch?" Carter asked, crouching next to the throne on the opposite side from her.

"Yep," Victoria nodded. "I figure the guy hid the best stuff, and he doesn't seem like the kind of guy to stray far from his throne."

"Point. But I think you're thinking too hard. Look at these," she stood up and gestured at the arms of the throne, the stylized symbols carved into it. "They're raised a bit more on the left side than the right." Victoria raised an eyebrow, then felt both arms, and sure enough, the left arm's carvings did seem a bit more... there. She pushed down on the symbol that looked a bit like a sun, and it pushed into the throne, and she heard a clicking sound from inside the throne.

"A combination lock." And she didn't know the combination or how to read the relevant numbers. She looked over, about to ask Arcade to lend his help, but he was busy trying to help Veronica calm the slave girls down. And together they seemed to be getting somewhere. She looked back at the arm, then at Carter. "Any ideas?"

"A few," Carter examined the symbols. "It would help if -" Carter furrowed her brow, then chuckled. "I don't think it is a combination lock." She walked over to where Veronica had tossed So'tal's bracelet and picked it up. "Help me get this back on his hand."

"After all Veronica did to get it off him in the first place?"

"We can take it back off him before he wakes up, but if I'm right, we need him to be wearing it when we press anything on this arm. Goa'uld are arrogant, but they're not suicidal, right?"

"Probably not," Victoria nodded.

Carter fitted the device onto his hand, then started to drag him a little so his arm could reach the chair. "He's not going to put a bomb in his throne, and if he's arrogant, is he really going to plan for him being beaten like this? If he laid his hand on the throne's left arm a bit too hard, he could start pushing buttons. If there was a booby trap, he'd risk it going off if he got too angry and slammed a fist."

"But he wears the Kara Kesh on his right hand. So it wouldn't be something he could do accidentally." Victoria followed her logic.

"Exactly! It's probably something he never takes off either." Carter lifted up his right hand, and held it over the left arm of the throne. She set the hand down, and the gem at the center glowed for a moment, and then the wall behind the throne slowly ground open.

"Good call," Victoria nodded at Carter, acknowledging her correct guess.

"Simple design logic," Carter walked over to the opening wall. It revealed an opulent bedroom, complete with a large bed covered in fancy-looking sheets. The room was filled with what looked like art of various kinds, statuettes and jewels and gold and all sorts of other things. Victoria started at it all, hearing the clink of bottle caps in her mind. Good god, this had to be worth - fuck, she had no idea. Assuming anyone could buy it all.

_And forget what I could buy with all this - the Stargate Project could be funded pretty well for quite a while on all this._

"Look at all this," Veronica grinned, walking up beside her. "Just hiding all these here." She picked up a bracelet with her good arm and examined it. It was solid gold, wide-band, with a green stone of some sort set into it. "Pretty." She observed, then set it down. "But that's not what we're here for." She turned around, and Victoria saw the two slave girls walking towards them.

"Are you sure you don't want to come with us?" She asked them.

"N-No. We want to go - we just want to go home." One of them said, her voice shaky. "Thank you for - for -" she stopped talking, closed her eyes and started shaking a bit, but Veronica put her hand on the girl's shoulder. Veronica was possessed with a powerful urge to shoot So'tal in the crotch a few dozen times. But at least the girls didn't seem broken entirely. Small favors.

Maybe.

"You don't need to say it. Or even thank me. I promise you - that bastard can never hurt you again. And if he was a god, I wouldn't have been able to hurt him, now would I?"

"N... No." the girl said after a moment. "But - " she bit her lip and said nothing for a moment. "Apophis will send more Jaffa. They will punish our people for allowing this to happen."

"If we could stay long enough to help your family escape - help all your family's escape, we would," Veronica promised. "I meant what I said - you can come with us."

"Is there an armory in this fortress? Somewhere where the weapons are stored?" Victoria asked. The former slave nodded after a moment's hesitation. "Take Veronica to it. Take weapons with you, to your people. Many of your people have fled into the hill country before, right? Do some still live there?"

"So... so they say." She nodded.

"Convince your family - as many of your people as possible - to flee into the hills." Victoria let out a sigh. "I wish we could do more to free your people." This planet would be perfect for settlement. Or even a place to trade for food. But stealing an entire planet from Apophis was well outside what they could do, without ships of their own, or at least some sort of weapons capable of destroying the warships Teal'c said Apophis could bring to bear.

"Perhaps we can do more in the future." It would be possible, maybe. But they couldn't launch too many raids through the Stargate on any one planet. But if they did get ships, even small ones.

Victoria knew it was perhaps thinking too far ahead, but the idea of supplying rebels certainly had a merit to it, in her mind. If a world like Viluntia could be shaken free from the Goa'uld, it would be very useful - and it would help the people there.

"I hope so," the girl said. "But thank you... Thank you for letting us free."

"One last question, Teana," Veronica asked softly. "In So'tal's chambers... where did he hide his most valuable possessions? His greatest 'magics'?"

The girl - Teana - hesitated for a moment, then she inhaled and steeled herself as best she could. "I saw him open it once - he did not know I was still conscious... that statue, there, by the mirror. A switch is underneath it, opening a concealed compartment in the wall."

"Thank you," Victoria said. She nodded to Veronica and then the girls, and the three went to the armory. They'd have plenty more chances for weapons, here and on other worlds, but those weapons might - might - give anyone who tried to run a fighting chance.

She turned back around to see Arcade and Carter examining some sort of device. It looked like a large watch, but instead of a clock, it had some sort of screen displaying a string of goa'uld characters, constantly changing.

"What is that?"

"We think it might be a Goa'uld version of a pipboy, or something like it. Sort of wrist computer, anyway." Carter said.

"Right now, it's asking us for a password, so..." Arcade shook his head.

"If we can get it back to the base, maybe Arcade and I can figure out some way to crack device, get past the password. But I'm sure it'll be a lot harder than hacking old world computers." Carter shrugged, "It's a guess - god only knows if our computers will be able to make any sense out of this technology at all."

"Maybe we can get So'tal to hand over his password." Not that she knew how. The man seemed to arrogant to just hand over information. They couldn't offer him freedom for information. Execution seemed possible, but that was a threat you could only deploy once. "We'll figure it out. Right now, I want to see what So'tal hid inside his secret compartment." She walked over to the statue Teana had mentioned and moved it aside, finding a small switch, as promised. It wasn't exactly well hidden, but then, it was hidden inside his own private room.

And who would steal from a god?

A panel opened in the wall, as promised, revealing a long compartment, not very deep, maybe a foot tall and five feet long, revealing an array of items. Several large crystals - long and thin, with pentagonal bases, some sort of tablet covered in goa'uld script and a small oval-shaped, translucent stone next to it. A device that looked somewhat like a Kara Kesh, but without the finger-attachments, and a much larger red gem at the center of it.

But what drew her eye the most was a small orb. It looked like it was made of steel. It rested inside of a small pink-cloth lined box. It was perfectly smooth. She reached for the box and looked at it. She searched for some sign of a way to open the orb, thinking it was a container of some sort, but she couldn't find a hinge or latch.

"What the hell is this?" She picked it up, examine it carefully, when the device started to vibrate in her hand.

_SHIT!_ She set it back in the box, about to drop the box, when an image appeared on it. A woman, gorgeous in appearance, from the shoulders up, wearing a bewjewled headdress and a bird-shaped pendant around her neck. Her long black hair was curly and her dark, almost black skin.

"So'tal, I do not like being interrupted -" the woman started, then she cut herself off when she realized the person speaking to her wasn't So'tal. Her eyes glowed and her voice deepened, "Who are you!? Where is So'tal?!"

"He's a bit incapacitated at the moment." She looked at the bird-shaped pendant. It looked an awful lot like the symbol on the forehead of Heru'ur's Jaffa.

_Well, well. Was So'tal trying to play both sides?_

"Who are you! One of Apophis's lieutenants!?" The woman smirked, "Did So'tal get caught in his treachery?"

"So little regard for one of your own?" Victoria asked. The woman seemed to think she was a Goa'uld - probably didn't expect that she was dealing with a human, holding something So'tal kept secure.

"So'tal was never one of ours. Heru'ur has little use for traitors."

"But enough use to use one against his enemies, clearly," Victoria chuckled. Sounded like Caesar and the Legion even more. She was reminded of what had happened in Nipton, how the Legion had used the Mayor to get their hands on NCR and Powder Gangers, then turned on him as well. The Legion only had contempt for men so willing to sell people out for mere material gain.

"You are no servant of Apophis," the woman said, narrowing her eyes. "Was So'tal dealing with another System Lord?" Then she shook her head, "No. Not even he would be so foolish. You are Tok'ra!" She growled out the word, as if it was a curse. "Your misbegotten kind will not survive long when Heru'ur has taken his rightful place as Supreme System Lord."

_Tok'ra?_ The name meant nothing to her, but from the way she said it, the sheer revulsion - it sounded personal.

"Well, I wouldn't count on it. He has his hands full with Apophis right now. I hear one of his listening posts went silent a while back too." She set the orb down and closed the box, hopefully shutting off the transmission.

"So we know they have long range visual communication." Carter said. "I'd love to see if I could figure out how that device works. If we could repurpose it, or get more, we might be able to use it to keep in touch with the NCR directly. Speed up the process of requesting additional resources."

"All yours," She handed it to Carter. "I wonder what these are. And why these crystals are so important?" She picked one up. "It doesn't look as fine a quality as the gemstones in all this jewelry."

"I think they're data storage devices," Arcade said, turning away from the Goa'uld computer-thing. "Teal'c mentioned something about Goa'uld using crystals to hold data."

"Think it could hold information on whatever the Goa'uld use to increase the agricultural yield?" That was the most important thing to get here - food wasn't exactly short in Cheyenne, but in the Wasteland, a community could rarely have too much food. And if they did, it could be used for export, for trade. For gifting, even.

"Could be. Would be better if we could get an actual sample of whatever they use. There should be some somewhere inside this place."

"Yeah, but we don't have time to look everywhere." Victoria looked at her Pipboy. "By now, assuming So'tal sent word for more people from the rest of the planet to come to the Fortress, we probably only have another half hour until we start to see larger groups attacking, or at least getting ready to. So we don't have long to look. Take what you can, and we'll look for anything that might be... I don't know, a fertilizer plant."

**January 13, 2283**

**Dr. Frasier's Officer, Cheyenne Mountain Sublevel 5**

"I'm not sure why you're bringing this to me," Dr. Frasier asked as she looked at the jar of dark brown, thick powder. "I'm a doctor, not a botanist, or agricultural specialist or anything like that."

"True, but Cheyenne doesn't really have any of those. You're the closest thing we've got to someone who can analyze how this works, what it does, and if we can make more." Victoria pointed out. "If it really does make crops grow faster, better, bigger, then Cheyenne and any neighboring communities might not want for food for a long time."

"We'd do better if we asked the NCR to help out more and send one of their biologists, but I'll see what I can do." Frasier put the jar down next to her computer. "Don't expect any miracles."

"I've long since given up on those, Doctor," Victoria shrugged. "Hammond doesn't expect any either. But he's the one who recommended I bring this to you."

"I'm flattered at his confidence." Frasier said, sounding genuine. "Your friend Veronica's arm will be fine in a day or two. Well, fine enough for her to use the arm, but she shouldn't go on any missions or go around punching anything for a week."

"I'm sure she'll be unhappy about that," Victoria smiled a little. "I talked to Teal'c. He said this was some sort of healing device," she handed Frasier the other wrist device that they'd found. "Carter and Arcade can't figure out how to make it work, but maybe you can. Though I'm sure they'll be by soon enough."

"Right, I'll add it to my ever-growing list of duties." Frasier commented, dryly.

"Sorry. I'd do more if I could. And if there's anything you need from me -"

"Broc Flower and Xandar Root." Frasier interrupted.

"The key ingredients in one form of new-world Stimpacks, yeah? And?" Victoria raised an eyebrow.

"Well, with all the NCR soldiers here, our stock of Stimpacks is going to fall faster than we can replace them. But I've heard from a few that served in the Mojave that both can be found in Zion Canyon in great numbers. And that you had an adventure there. Made some friends." Frasier shrugged. "It's a long way to go, but we're going to need additional supplies of both plants if we want to keep in stimpacks."

"I can send word the next time the NCR sends a team back with reports and stuff. I do know some people in Zion, and some people who can trade with those people." Victoria shrugged. Best place to start would be Cass, and her new caravan project, partially funded by Victoria's own resources. and the Happy Trails caravan - sure, their leader had died on the trip to Zion, but the locals and the New Cannanites had reached out to them after the White Legs had been driven out.

"I'd appreciate it." Frasier nodded. "Is there anything else?"

"Not at the moment. I'll leave you to your ever-growing list of duties." Victoria gave the doctor a smile, then turned around and headed out of Frasier's office. She wanted to talk to Veronica, and then she had to talk to Hammond and O'Neill about what was next for the Project. What planets next, what team would go where. Viluntia had been a success, but they couldn't rest on their laurels.

And then of course, at some point, she'd have to try to take a stab at interrogating So'tal. See if she could outsmart him into spilling something.


	11. Chapter 11 - It's A Wide World Out There

**Disclaimer:** Don't own it, yada yada

As I believe I've mentioned to some, there are things that Teal'c and others absolutely should have known at earlier points in the show, given later details, but that, because the writers hadn't mentioned it, never come up. Such as details about the Tok'ra having underground tunnels (which Teal'c says he'd been ordered to find, and which he says were spoken of in legends), things like Jolinar preferring female hosts and thus being a she (though this one might have been because everyone else assumed Jolinar had been in a male host previously), if she'd had a female host when she rebelled at Malkshur.

And details like, Asgard Motherships - he mentioned in Thor's Chariot that Jaffa legends spoke of them. I don't blame the writers, much - they were making things up as they went along, and they did better at that than a lot of other showrunners in the same boat do, but still, there's a lot of things Teal'c logically would have mentioned sooner.

Next chapter will be another trip through the Stargate.

Wasteland Gate

By Kylia

Chapter 11: It's A Wide World Out There

**January 13, 2283**

**Gym, Cheyenne Mountain Sublevel 21**

She'd checked in with Teal'c quickly after returning from Viluntia, but there'd been too many things going on for a long conversation. She'd spoken to O'Neill and Hammond - as long as Veronica was off-duty for the arm, they wanted her to stay on base, since one of her team was down. Victoria was... oddly fine with that. Part of her burned to go out to yet another world, keep exploring, keep going, but the other part of her wanted to stay. She didn't want to go out without Veronica by her side. She'd gotten used to having her by her side around the Mojave, and missed her on the way to and back from the NCR...

It was stupid, moon-eyed pathetic crush nonsense, mostly, but it was a good excuse to stick around, stay near Veronica, and pave the way for more missions, get more preparation in.

Not that the project was going to stay silent - joint NCR and CDV teams were going to be hitting worlds that Teal either didn't recognize the address of, or knew were empty, abandoned worlds the Goa'uld had no use for. Hammond was of the opinion that they shouldn't hit the Goa'uld too many times, too often. And of course, not hit Apophis again yet.

O'Neill was less ambivalent towards continued belligerence, but equally, he understood the merits of spreading the attacks out - as a Ranger, he knew the value of not letting potential enemies know too much about you, or expect your attacks. Apophis would no doubt find out about the attack on Viluntia soon enough, but if they attacked him again right after, then he might prepare all his words for more attacks from them, knowing they were a likely outcome.

_Whereas if you have no idea if or where another attack will come, you can't always justify the diversion of force._

What Victoria really wanted was real-time or up to date front line intel about the front lines in all the wars, major and minor, the Goa'uld had going on. Teal'c had told them what he knew, and was still sharing, but his information would be increasingly out of date.

Hammond wanted to find a place that could serve as a steady source for food. O'Neill wasn't against the idea, but he did feel like it was a lower priority. But he had apparently decided not to force the issue right now, since Woolsey had decided he wanted to side with Hammond as well, on this. He wanted the joint project to find something more useful, saleable - goa'uld technology was good to have, and in the long run, the best thing the stargate could give the NCR - she'd seen how President Kimball had loved the idea of plasma weaponry in the hands of all the NCR's troopers, or even one plasma weapon per squad.

The real weakness for plasma weaponry was ammo - there just wasn't enough in the way of power cells that worked for them. And recycling old compatible cells, or trying to make new ones, and the like - it was expensive, and slow.

If they could figure out a way to power more conventional plasma weapons with the Naquadah the Goa'uld used in their inefficient staff weapons...

_Well, that's the ballgame, isn't it?_

But that would be expensive in resources, and take a long time to develop and make viable, in theory.

Food - well, you could get that in a few months, depending. Woolsey had argued that not only could it allow a surplus for Cheyenne and the NCR soldiers to be built up, but the sales of any excess food could help offset the costs of the more ambitious projects.

_And sure, he's right, but farming is fucking boring. There's a reason I didn't stay at the family homestead back west._ Well, a lot of reasons, and her family had only been part time farmers - their plot of land hadn't been big enough for that to be a full time job.

Still. Farming was boring, and talking about farming and the economics and business of farming even more so.

With the meeting over and nothing else immediately pressing on her time, Victoria did need to check in with Teal'c in more detail - she had a few more questions for him, and she should let him know that since his intel had checked out, Hammond had signed off on him going on off-world missions.

After asking around, she found him in the Gym on sublevel 21, lifting weights - when clearing the place out, the former occupants of Stargate Command hadn't taken those with them. He was lifting what looked like at least 200 lbs, and didn't seem to be remotely bothered by it. Victoria couldn't help but admire the movements of his arms and shoulders for a moment while he lifted. She didn't go in for lots of muscles on men, generally, but she had to admit Teal'c was an aesthetically appealing figure of a man, regardless.

After a few moments, Teal' finished his reps and set the weights on the metal holders, sitting up on the bench.

"Victoria Fernandez," He nods. "How may I be of assistance?"

"I have a few questions, but the first thing I wanted to mention was that Hammond has signed off on you being allowed to go on offworld missions now, since your intel checked out.."

Teal'c nodded, "That is indeed welcome news. I pledged my life to this world, to the fight against the Goa'uld. While the beasts of your world are indeed challenging foes, it is not the purpose I intended when I joined you."

"Well, you'll get your chance pretty soon. Hammond and Woolsey want to spend the next week running missions to those worlds you identified as empty or didn't recognize the addresses of, but after that, some more front-line missions. We'll have to figure out where to go, obviously, but - when we were raiding So'tal's personal stuff, I found this... orb. I touched it, and it turned on - some woman who works for Heru'ur showed up on it, talking, and she could see me."

"A long-ranged visual communications device. They are used by Goa'uld to speak - larger ones can be used to make announcements to larger groups of soldiers." Teal'c explained. He furrowed his brow, "So'tal was speaking with a servant of Heru'ur? Are you sure? I would not have suspected So'tal to conduct such treachery."

"Well, she had the symbol of Heru'ur around her neck," Victoria gestured to her own neck, though she wasn't sure why, "and she practically said as much - sounds like they were using him. When I said he was incapacitated, she told me Heru'ur had no use for traitors."

She shrugged, "Why wouldn't you think So'tal would be a traitor? From what you've said, I'd think betrayal is basically the Goa'uld way of saying 'hello'?" She chuckled a little, though Teal'c, unsurprisingly, did not react to her little joke.

"Treachery is a common thing among the Goa'uld, yes. But So'tal - Apophis once said that one of the few Goa'uld he did not expect to betray him was So'tal." Teal shook his head, "He believed that So'tal lacked the imagination for such conduct."

"Well, I guess he was wrong."

"Indeed." Tea'c nodded. "I suppose you have inadvertently aided Apophis by taking him prisoner."

"A little, yeah. But this also means he might be able to tell us at least a bit about Heru'ur," Victoria pointed out. "But that's not what I wanted to ask you about primarily - when the Goa'uld I was talking to realized I wasn't working for Apophis, she accused me of being 'Tok'ra'. She used the word like... I dunno, like I'd say _pendejo_ or _puta_. But worse." Teal'c raised one eyebrow at her.

"Sorry - curse words. She said it like... like the word was something truly nasty."

"The Goa'uld hate the Tok'ra more than any other foe, even the Phantom Godslayers." Teal'c said. "But there is little I know for sure of them - there are legends passed among the Jaffa, and there is what I know from what orders Apophis has given me in regards to them, but I do not know much for sure."

"Well, let's start with what you do know." Victoria pointed out. _Some sort of enemy of the Goa'uld, but one that is human._ Would have to be, for her to be mistaken for one, right?

_Unless they're other parasites?_ If there was one kind of body controlling parasite alien out there, couldn't there be more?

There was a pleasant thought, wasn't there?

"The Tok'ra are of the same being as the Goa'uld," Teal'c said, blowing Victoria's 'human Tok'ra' theory up in smoke. "Legends say that they are descended from a traitor queen, who birthed a brood of demons in place of gods, but some Goa'uld, such as Garshaw of Belote, and Jolinar of Malkshur, have been known to become Tok'ra." Teal'c explained, throwing unfamiliar names at her, but Victoria figured she'd ask about them later.

"Regardless of the truth, the Tok'ra take human hosts, as to Goa'uld, but they oppose the System Lords - all Goa'uld desire power, but the Tok'ra engage in subtle warfare, sabotage and spying." Teal'c shook his head, "They have no armies, no fleets, but they are experts at matters of espionage. More than once has Apophis had his plans ruined by Tok'ra infiltrators, as has every other System Lord. They fight without honor."

"So not the good guys then?" Victoria raised an eyebrow. Of course, if they took hosts, that was kind of a given.

"I have seen no evidence of such." Teal'c answered. "Though, Apophis ascribed all manner of evil powers to the Tok'ra ,and evil motives." He said that part carefully, but it was easy to gather his implication.

"And when it comes to the goa'uld, if they told me water was wet, I wouldn't take their word for it." Victoria nodded, and Teal'c did as well. "But that doesn't mean the Tok'ra are good guys. Still, they oppose the Goa'uld - you said most of them come from one queen?"

"That is what is said, yes. Each goa'uld inherits the knowledge of those who come before - and so it is believed that most Tok'ra, so different from most Goa'uld, come from one queen. Her name is unknown, but it is said that there was a Queen once, who birthed a race of demons - and as punishment, Ra sealed her away for eternity. But this was many thousands of years ago, if it happened at all." Teal'c explained. "If this Queen truly birthed the Tok'ra, I cannot say."

"It makes sense, but I suppose the question of where they came from isn't relevant. But you say they're different? Are no goa'uld capable of spying?" Given how arrogant and demanding the two she'd actually spoken to seemed, it didn't seem impossible that they were incapable of the subtleties required.

"Some, but they are uncommon, and even they are as arrogant and prideful as the rest. It is the greatest weakness of the Goa'uld - Apophis has failed in some of his ventures because of his own blindness to the weaknesses of his plans." Teal'c pointed out, but this was something he'd already told them, so that wasn't new information.

"The Tok'ra are said to lack pride," Teal'c continued, "or arrogance. To give their lives rather than be captured. I have seen Apophis, or his underlords take other Goa'uld prisoner, and trick them through his words to reveal what they know, by playing their egos against them. I have never seen him capture a Tok'ra alive, but it is said even when that happens, they will not speak, not even under the most dire of tortures."

"Well, gotta admire the stubbornness," Victoria mused. "So the difference is tactical and personality based? And the goa'uld hate the Tok'ra? That much?"

"Indeed. Little can unite the System Lords like a Tok'ra. Jolinar of Malkshur," Teal'c brought up the earlier name,"was once a servant of the System Lord Cronus, another old enemy of Apophis. She earned her name for the battle of Malkshur, when she led her forces against both Cronus and Apophis as they warred for the planet - but it is said that after her allegiance to the Tok'ra was discovered, the two allied against her forces, and crushed them. She fled, and has been hunted since."

"How many enemies does Apophis have?" Victoria asked, curiously.

"Every system Lord opposes every other System Lord eventually," Teal'c said, almost philosophically. "Alliances are merely matters of convenience for them. But Apophis reserves his greatest hatred for Cronus and Heru'ur, though it is said he held even greater hatred for Ra, when he reigned."

"Well, that makes sense. Hate the guy who forces you to obey him." Victoria shrugged. "Wonder why the Goa'uld hate the Tok'ra so much." She shook her head, "I suppose we'll find out someday, or we won't. If they're just as bad as the Goa'uld, it doesn't change much at all, though I suppose we can bear their animus in mind."

Play them against each other, a bit, eventually, maybe.

"There is little else known for sure about the Tok'ra, but it is said that they have the technology - the magic - to grow tunnels, creating vast underground homes for themselves in mere days." Teal'c went on, "Many words, Apophis ordered that I search for signs of such tunnels, but never once did I find them."

"That would be a useful technology to have," Victoria mused. It would make it easier to expand the tunnels here, or make vaults bigger, or just, build safe shelters for all kinds of reasons. Could help with mining too, potentially, though Victoria couldn't say for sure. "We'll have to try and steal it if we run into any Tok'ra."

"Do not count on it being a likely occurrence," Teal'c suggested. "The Tok'ra are not commonly found until after they depart."

"True, we aren't likely to trip and land in one of their tunnels," Victoria considered. If the Goa'uld couldn't find them, and still had to deal with this enemy threat for so long, then presumably they were very good at hiding themselves. Still, if they ever did find one, worth keeping in mind, but... well, there were other priorities.

Then something else that Teal'c had mentioned occurred to her, and she spoke, "Are there any other enemies of the Goa'uld then? For the Tok'ra to be the most hated, that means there have to be others. Beyond just the Phantom Godslayers and each other."

"The Goa'uld have fought many enemies over the millennia - stories of their destruction, the battles fought to defeat them pass down. Countless races have been destroyed by the Goa'uld for not being suitable as slaves or hosts, or the merest hints of resistance." Teal'c said, his voice seeming to be more than a little upset - though again, it remained hard to tell.

"But some enemies yet remain," Teal'c continued, "the Reetou, Ohnes and the Omeyocan among those who fight, but are too few in number or too weak in technology to pose much true threat. Only the Asgard are a danger to the Goa'uld, enough that the Goa'uld have accepted that certain words, certain parts of the galaxy are forbidden to them, on pain of further war."

"Powerful enough to make the Goa'uld make peace?" Now that sounded like Victoria's kind of alien, though they could be just as terrifying as the Goa'uld, she supposed.

"It is said that Asgard Motherships, great vessels shaped like hammers, can destroy many times their number of Ha'taks," Teal'c said. "The Goa'uld do not allow such speech to be made among their Jaffa, however. They speak of the Asgard as powerful enemies, however."

"Are they evil too?"

"I cannot say," Teal'c admitted. "Apophis and all other System Lords would claim as such, that the Asgard are demons as well, monsters that slay gods and Jaffa, but can be defeated with brave warriors and great skill..." he trailed off for a moment, then, "I cannot say that there is a legend of any victory of the Goa'uld over the Asgard, save for one - Ra, once, led the united fleets of all the Goa'uld to victory, but no other stories are told."

"Well, they're not Goa'uld, and they haven't tried to take over the galaxy, so let's just pencil them in as 'not the enemy' for now," Victoria considered. "We can worry about finding them another time. They protect certain worlds and regions of space from the Goa'uld?"

"Some, yes. Apophis would occasionally send his Jaffa to such worlds, to test the Asgard, as do other Goa'uld. No Jaffa return from such efforts." Teal'c warned. "I would not advise testing the Asgard."

"Probably a good plan. Especially not if you're with us." Victoria nodded. "Thank you, Teal'c. This has been enlightening. Always is when I have the chance to talk with you."

"There is much I know of the Goa'uld - more than I can tell in any single meeting," Teal'c nodded. "But I will always speak of what I know, and offer what may help."

"And we appreciate it. You're welcome to talk Mitchell or O'Neill about going offworld with some of the teams now, and like I said, when I go on my next mission, I'd like you by my side." Victoria offered.

"Gladly," Teal'c nodded. "You are a skilled warrior, Victoria Fernandez. To fight by your side would be an honor."

_I don't think I've ever heard that before._ Victoria resisted the urge to chuckle, worried Teal'c would take it the wrong way.

"Likewise," she said after a moment, which wasn't exactly untrue, even if she wouldn't have phrased it in terms of honor. "Maybe we'll be able to free more Jaffa from the Goa'uld."

"That would indeed be a welcome occurance. But I do not expect the day my people win their freedom to come in my lifetime." Teal'c admitted.

"Maybe not," Victoria agreed. "Big galaxy." Not that she'd had any idea how big it was - or what a galaxy really was - until recently. "But I never thought I'd see the day humanity left Earth, and now I've found out it happened ages ago." House's plans to abandon Earth had seemed so silly.

_But he knew about the Stargate too, so I suppose this was his plan._ Well, now it was her plan. Well, hers and the NCR's and Cheyenne's.

"Perhaps," Teal'c nodded. "Is there anything else you wished to discuss?"

"Not right now. I'll leave you to your workout," Victoria nodded and left the gym.

**January 13, 2283**

**Veronica's Workspace, Sublevel 19**

**Cheyenne Mountain**

"Back to working on the plasma weapons?" Victoria asked, knocking on the empty doorway. Veronica looked up from the plasma rifle she'd disassembled.

"Sort of, kind of" Veronica shrugged. "I've got an idea, but it's gonna take time, and probably a few more plasma rifles." Victoria looked over the pieces of the gun, then furrowed her brow.

"Looks like you've already got two there," she gestured to the table.

"One and a half. I got a broken one off a scavenger a few days ago. Most of the other people working on this don't agree with me, but I think we're never going to be able to jury rig a way to make this stuff," she picked up a vial of liquid naquadah from its place next to the staff weapon she'd take it out of, "power a conventional plasma weapon. At least not without making it too prone to blowing up on us."

"Not giving up on it?" Victoria teased.

Veronica smiled, "Of course not. I just... well, you know how much I complained about how complacent the Brotherhood got. I was just as complacent as they were - I wanted to go out and do stuff, find more old technology, but I didn't really think often about trying to _make_ better technology. A bit, but..." she shook her head.

"So what, you want to make a new kind of plasma rifle?" Victoria assumed.

"Exactly." Veronica chuckled, "Granted, it'll be cannibalizing other plasma weapons, but these liquid naquadah cores last a long time. Imagine - no more microfusion cells. Just one gun, fire it for months, or even years." She picked up the empty staff weapon, and mimed aiming it - or trying to. The thing really wasn't made for aiming, as they knew well.

Or rather, Veronica _tried_ to aim it. Her penchant for punching her way out of problems left her form and posture all wrong.

"Okay, no, no, that's now how you'd aim that if you were trying to do that," Victoria chuckled, moving to stand behind Veronica.

"Oh, like you'd know, Miss Pistols," Veronica countered, though there was no heat in her voice. Victoria put a hand on Veronica's shoulders, gently adjusting her stance a little, trying to ignore just how close they were.

_Damnit Victoria..._

"I've been known to shoot a rifle from time to time. I got my start as a courier with a hunting rifle, if you can believe that." She'd quickly decided she preferred pistols, but still.

"Oh?" Veronica asked softly, leaning into Victoria's hands a little, making it easier for her to adjust to Victoria's direction.

"Yup. The damn things are a dime a dozen in the NCR. Some made more recently by the Gun Runners or some other maker, but they're sturdy and solid - most of the ones out there go all the way back to before the Great War. With a bit of maintenance, it's hard to go wrong with one." She explained. "So when I decided to be a courier, going out and delivering packages and messages across dangerous areas... I bought one of my own - practiced on my parents' ones growing up after all." She hesitated a moment, and then moved her hands to Veronica's arms, careful to avoid the cast and to move the arm with it gingerly.

"And you need to hold it like this too. See, move this hand up a bit, and then readjust your hold on the trigger. Got it?" Victoria didn't realize until she was halfway through that her lips were near Veronica's ear as she explained, and pulled back, quickly, trying not to be obvious about it.

_Damnit._ She repeated again. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her pulse racing, and Victoria was pretty sure her breathing had grown just a little more shallow.

"And when did you decide you preferred pistols more?"

"When I realized that out on the road, when it's you, four raiders and no one else for miles, rate of fire is a lot more important than when you're hunting, or defending the homestead," Victoria shrugged. "And while I could have gone for something more like a semiautomatic rifle, ammo for that was just too expensive starting out."

"And now you could afford to single-handedly outfit an army." Veronica pointed out. "Or close enough."

"Hardly, but true, ammo costs aren't really a problem for me." She shrugged, "I can keep my eyes open for more parts for you," she added, as Veronica set down the empty staff weapon. "Do you have a specific design in mind, or are you just winging it?"

"Bit of both. What I need to do is increase the amount of juice that the plasma rifle can handle." Veronica gestured to the parts on the table. "The issue with just hooking these liquid naquadah cells up to the plasma rifle is, like I said, you'll just make the thing explode. So much power, the thing can't handle it. Fire it a few times, overheats, and at the very least your hands are unusable for a while."

"I'd still have my hands?"

"Depends on the condition of the gun. Plasma weaponry even before the war was touchy, so they were designed to handle overheating and components. They'd blow up more... mildly, if they blew up at all." Veronica explained.

_I suppose that makes sense._ The US government had been up to all kinds of nasty shit before the war, or so was her interpretation of the evidence she'd found in Vaults and old computer terminals - they certainly enabled a lot of horrible stuff, like at Big Mountain, and then gave rise to the Enclave and all that genocidal insanity, but they weren't going to give their soldiers a gun that would kill the user as often as the enemy.

"But these days, they're just as likely to blow off your hands if they overheat and you can't cool it down quickly." Veronica finished. "Worn, old components, repaired badly if all, replaced with substandard scavenged wiring and the like..." Veronica shrugged. "Better idea is to start over."

"And you have a plan for that?"

"Stack several capacitors into it. I'm not going to try to increase the power a plasma rifle actually puts out - the idea is to run a bank of capacitors for the power from the liquid naquadah to run through." Veronica showed Victoria the various sketches she'd made and the components she was using. "It's going to be a funky, bulky thing, but hopefully it will do the job."

"I'm sure you can figure it out," Victoria said. "Even if I really only understand one word in five on these sketches of yours. Once you figure it out, what then?"

"Easy. I hand a completed design over to Cheyenne and the NCR, let them make new ones. I don't want to just make plasma rifles over and over again. There's a whole galaxy of technology to discover and use out there," she gestured downwards, in the direction of the Stargate.

_Sounds familiar._ Even if her focus hadn't been technology. It was the similarity, and the sense of wonder Veronica had that Victoria shared - even if she was a bit more cynical about it - was one of the things that drew her to the other woman in the first place.

"How's the arm feeling anyway?"

"Hurts, but as long as I move the arm carefully and slowly, and don't jostle it in the cast... I can function," Veronica answered. "I took some Med-X, but half a dose and that's all I'm going to take for it."

"Using it when you're in pain isn't an automatic risk of addiction, Veronica," Victoria chided. She didn't want to see her hurting.

"I can function with the pain. I hit people in a fight. I'm used to my arms being sore," Veronica said, defending her choice. "It's as much about saving the Med-X for the people who need it more. Harder to make that stuff than stimpacks." She turned back to the table. "So what do you have planned for the next week?" She asked. "This is all I'll be up to, probably."

"I'm going to try getting some information out of So'tal at some point, but I'll probably want Arcade's help for that, and he's busy working on translations right now." Victoria answered. "Apart from that - I've got letters to send back to the NCR and Mojave to write - Frasier wants to see if I can get her more Broc Flower and Xander Root, from Zion Canyon. And setting up a secure and reliable caravan route from here to New Vegas is going to take some serious work."

"So boring logistics, in other words," Veronica teased.

"Boring, but important. I think I can get Cass to handle a lot of the work. There's money to be made, and I'm funding her new caravan, so I give her the resources... she should be able to try something. The communities that used to rely on the Legion for Protection are opening up to unrestricted trade again, because they don't have much choice anymore." Victoria explained. "And I'm boring you, aren't I?" She asked, as Veronica started fiddling some some of the electrical components on the table.

"No more than I bored you with my technical talk about the Plasma Rifle," Veronica replied. "Just a lot to do and so little time."

"True." Quickly, Victoria gave Veronica a quick hug from behind, arms around her waist for a moment. "I'll be stopping by periodically to make sure you eat and sleep."

"Don't trust me to do that on my own?" Veronica laughed.

"Never." Victoria chuckled, pulling away from Veronica, and heading back out into the hallway.

**January 15th, 2283**

**Prison Cell, Cheyenne Mountain**

So'tal was under guard 24/7. They didn't know if it was possible for the snake that was in his head could just... leave and grab a new host, but the orders were to shoot to kill him and the snake if it did.

_But then... he is the snake, right? So killing the host seems pointless..._ Victoria shook her head. It was hard to get used to the idea that when she talked to what looked like a person, sounded like a person - sort of, mostly, usually - and yet... was really just a small, foot-long snake inside his head.

Still, the orders were in place, to be safe. Teal'c seemed fairly certain that once a Goa'uld left a host, they were gone from that host for good, but Hammond was less willing to take chances and Woolsey seemed inclined to agree.

_So am I, for that matter._

Of course, the problem with keeping an eye on him so the snake didn't slip out is that the guy liked to talk. A lot.

"-you have not know torture until you have experienced what a painstick can do to you, human," So'tal said, his threats delivered almost conversationally at the CDV and NCR soldiers - one of each -standing just inside the doorway. He looked at her as she stepped through the now open doorway.

"You know, I expected you to try to escape by now," Victoria said, "Rather than just deliver an endless series of empty threats."

"I can assure you, the Goa'uld do not make empty threats. I will be free, and you will all suffer for the indignities you have wrought upon a god!" He growled, leaning forward quickly enough to rattle the chains that held him to the floor and table. He had very limited range of motion - just enough to eat, and while the Goa'uld had looked in disdain at the food given him, he'd apparently decided that eating the prepacked prewar shit they'd tossed at him was better than starving. The radiation seemed to have had no real effect on him. When she or most other people at them, she definitely had to take some time to throw off the effects of the rads in the food, if not just take some radaway and deal with it the hard way.

"For a god, you seem to be pretty powerless," Victoria mused, sitting across from him. "So, how have you found your captivity so far?" She cocked her head to the side, raising an eyebrow.

"Your attempts to break my will by subjecting me to indignities will not work, human." He snapped at her.

"I have a name, So'tal. Can I call you So'tal?" Victoria asked, clasping her hands in front of her. "Or are you going to keep talking like a living cliche. Because I've met cliches before, and it's lot more fun when you have a personality."

So'tal looked at her, seemingly baffled by her words, but he recovered from his confusion soon enough. "Impressive your technology may be, but you are no match for the might of the Goa'uld. Do you think I will surrender the secrets you seek?"

"Not right no, probably. But given enough time, maybe. And no, I suppose we're not a match for the Goa'uld, but the Phantom Godslayers seem to be giving you plenty of problems."

"You are not the phantoms who hunt the Goa'uld," So'tal said confidently. "They do not take prisoners. They do not show their faces. They strike as cowards and leave only ash in their wake. Weaklings outside their armored suits."

"No, we're not them. But we've got all the same toys they do." Victoria shrugged. "We're from the same world they originally came from. Couldn't tell you where they are now though." She wanted to find out, one way or the other. She could guess it was Abydos - but they didn't have a Stargate Address for it. And while it was possible a Goa'uld might know it - like So'tal - Victoria didn't want to tip any hands by mentioning it just yet.

So'tal narrowed his eyes, saying nothing.

"Here's the thing, buddy. We know you were working with Heru'ur." So'tal tensed a little, but did not say anything or react more. He could do a poker face, or nearly so. Interesting. "Could probably just hand you over to Apophis with that."

"And what would that gain you?" So'tal pointed out. "Little more than killing me."

"Actually, killing you would at least let us dissect you." Though they could dissect Goa'uld taken from other Jaffa too. _I wonder if we can surgically remove a Goa'uld from the host without killing either of them?_ She doubted it would be that simple, but maybe it was possible. She made a note to talk to Dr. Frasier about that. She doubted Teal'c would know, but she could ask him too.

"But," she went on, "You're underestimating the power of spite. Keep not talking, and we may just toss you through a Stargate with a note saying 'if found, return this traitor to Apophis'."So'tal, unsurprisingly, either did not get her joke, or didn't find it funny. _I bet O'Neill would enjoy it._

"Your attempts at intimidation are not working," So'tal ground out, though at least was a little less... arrogant sounding.

"No, I didn't think they would. You're not getting the point here. I'm not expecting you to just fold like a deck of cards. That would be nice, but I don't expect it. But we've got all the time in the world for you to get desperate."

"Desperate for what?"

"Flavor. Sensation. You Goa'uld might be truly unpleasant snakes, but humans can be right bastards too, when we want to. The food you ate will be a luxury compared to what we could feed you." Tasteless gruel was actually hard to make - food had taste, just naturally. But it was doable. And solitary... even for a Goa'uld, being locked in true solitary for a few weeks should have an impact. "We'll find a way to make you talk, one way or another. Or you'll die." Victoria stood up and turned to the guards.

"Hammond and O'Neill will be ordering him moved soon." Well, she was going to tell them that they should, anyway. She was fairly certain she could convince them.

"There is nothing you can do that will sway me, human!" So'tal snarled as she left. "I will see you tortured a thousand lifetimes for this!"

"Please, go ahead, try," Victoria chuckled, closing the door behind her. _Well. that was... well, I can't say interesting. Not even unique. It was like talking to a less charismatic Caesar._

Still, she thought she'd cracked the facade a little. She could hope, anyway. She really didn't want to die of old age before someone got So'tal to talk.


End file.
